Sunni Arab lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq demanded the government's swearing-in be postponed until the security ministries were allotted, delivering an angry speech that lasted nearly 10 minutes before the microphone was taken away. Then he and about 10 other Sunni deputies from his Arab nationalist faction stalked out in protest.

Much more than restoring security is at stake for the government and the United States, which designed and engineered much of the transition to democracy in the three years since it invaded Iraq and set the stage for al-Maliki's coalition of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Ashraf Qazi, the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's envoy in Iraq, urged the new government to "undertake a major reconstruction of Iraq's political and social fabric."

"Iraq's citizens deserve nothing less and have every right to expect that competent, transparent government would yield improvements both in terms of public security and in the delivery of public services," Qazi said.

Many analysts fear the country's violence has assumed some characteristics of an irregular civil war, including targeted assassinations, sectarian bombings and armed groups seeking power and attacking the central government and its employees.

Many of Iraq's insurgent groups are led by Sunni Arabs, and a goal of the new government is to win the support of that formerly dominant minority and to recruit as many of them as possible into Iraq's security forces _ especially in insurgent strongholds like western Anbar province.

One of Saturday's attacks, a suicide car bombing at a police station that killed at least five people and wounded 10, took place in Anbar city of Qaim.

In the day's deadliest assault, 19 people died when a bomb hidden in a paper bag exploded in Baghdad's Sadr City district next to a line of day laborers waiting for work.