The two ministries, which oversee the army and the police, are crucial for restoring stability, and Maliki needs to find candidates with wide acceptance from his broad-based governing coalition of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds.
Failure to set the right tone could further alienate the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which is the backbone of the insurgency. Or it could anger Shi'ite militias, some of which are thought to number in the thousands.
''We are aware of the security challenge and its effects," Maliki said. ''So we believe that facing this challenge cannot be achieved through the use of force only, despite the fact that we are going to use the maximum force in confronting the terrorists and the killers who are shedding blood."
Disarming militias, whose members are believed to have infiltrated the security services, will be a priority, he said, along with promoting national reconciliation, improving the country's collapsing infrastructure and setting up a special protection force for Baghdad.
It is unclear whether Maliki, a Shi'ite with the conservative Islamic Dawa party, will be able to persuade others in the religious United Iraqi Alliance to use their influence to try to disarm Shi'ite armed groups.
Many Sunni Arabs think some Shi'ite militias are behind death squads blamed for sectarian violence that has escalated in recent months, with dozens of bodies being found across Iraq daily.
Maliki decried what he called ''sectarian cleansing."
''The militias, death squads, and the killings are all abnormal phenomena," he said. ''We should finish the issue of militias because we cannot imagine stability and security in this country with the presence of militias that kill and kidnap."
The new government was welcomed by several Arab leaders, many of whom worry that the violence in Iraq could spill over to its neighbors and that their own extremists might find fertile training ground in Iraq and eventually return to their homelands to wreak havoc.
