New Kuwaiti Cabinet Stars Ruling Family : Government: The Sabahs, named to most of the powerful positions, maintain their grip. The democratic opposition refuses to join.

KUWAIT CITY —  Crown Prince Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah maintained the ruling family’s grip on power Saturday, naming a new Cabinet that includes Sabahs in all of the most powerful positions and cuts out the democratic opposition, which refused to join the new Kuwaiti government.

The former defense and interior ministers, popularly blamed for presiding over Kuwait’s collapse to the Iraqi invaders, gained new positions in the Cabinet, while some of Kuwait’s best-known officials, including the foreign minister, Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah, and the one-time finance and oil minister, Sheik Ali al Khalifa al Sabah, were dropped.

“We are passing through a historical turning point as a result of destruction of the infrastructure of the state triggered by the Iraqi occupation,” Prince Saad said in his nomination address. “The formation of a new Cabinet comes at these difficult circumstances in an effort to deal with this situation.”

Opposition leaders bitterly criticized the crown prince for failing to make concessions that would have opened the way for participation of a broad political spectrum in the Cabinet and predicted that the new government would be short-lived.

“I think this coming government will fall in about three months’ time, because the people will not accept it. I think it will be born dead,” said Ahmed Bakr, an Islamic opposition leader and member of Kuwait’s dissolved Parliament.

“Does the prime minister want to lose the country and win a family?” added a senior Kuwaiti official who has been critical of the Sabah family’s handling of the conflict with Iraq. “I’m baffled. . . . This is not a government that’s going to be able to manage the crisis. Nothing’s changed.”

Five of the 21 Cabinet seats are held by Sabahs, who formerly held seven seats but who maintain their control of the key positions, including the Foreign Affairs, Defense, Interior and Social Affairs ministries, in addition to the crown prince’s role as prime minister.

Kuwait’s oil minister, Rashid Amiri, was ousted in the wake of widespread complaints that the ministry had not moved quickly enough to control hundreds of raging oil fires lighted by Iraqi troops during their seven-month occupation. But he was replaced by Hamoud Rogba, former minister of electricity and water, who was criticized for long delays in restoring basic water and power services to the country after the Iraqis were driven out.

The former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Sheik Sabah, a veteran of the government for nearly three decades and a brother of the emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, was abruptly dropped from the Cabinet in what was the only major surprise in Saturday’s announcement. He was replaced by the controversial former interior minister, Sheik Salim al Sabah al Sabah, who led an occasionally violent crackdown on the democratic opposition last spring during protests demanding a full restoration of the Parliament, dissolved in 1986.

The failure to remove Sheik Salim and the emir’s other brother, Sheik Nawaf al Ahmed al Sabah, former defense minister who became the new social affairs minister, prompted many Kuwaitis to complain that the ruling family is not serious about reforms.

“I don’t know if a government that got us into this crisis could ever get us out of it. They’re sending a message to the people that nothing has changed,” said Ahmed Bahar, an architect and Kuwait city municipal employee.

“This is not really what we stayed here for for seven months (during the occupation),” he added. “We just won’t take it. We’re not violent people, we’re not used to carrying guns. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Opposition leaders had been courted for Cabinet positions since the government resigned March 19 amid widespread public dissatisfaction with the pace of resurrecting the ravaged country and the implementation of promised democratic reforms.

However, the opposition refused to participate after Prince Saad refused to meet their key demands: that the new Cabinet include representatives of all of Kuwait’s political factions, that a definite date be set for national elections in the first three months of 1992, that all financial transactions of the government since the Aug. 2 invasion be submitted to the Parliament for review when it is restored and that the vast majority of the old Cabinet, especially the interior and defense ministers, be removed.

Saad, according to opposition sources, was willing to agree to review of financial transactions but balked at renouncing his authority to establish a Cabinet under his own terms. “He said, ‘I don’t want anyone to tell me any conditions,’ ” said a former Parliament member who met with the crown prince for nearly two hours before the new Cabinet was announced.

Now, said one prominent opposition leader, “Nobody wants to share the responsibility of what’s happening.”

Diplomats and opposition leaders say many of those opposed to the Sabah family’s handling of the crisis have decided to avoid joining what is essentially an interim government and instead are preparing for the new parliamentary elections, which the emir has pledged to hold sometime in 1992.

“It’s a lame duck government before it starts,” a Western diplomat said. “It’s facing real problems, and some real decisions will have to be made, and there may be some criticism.

“Will the opposition mount a serious challenge to the Sabahs and demand a major reduction in power, or will they just want free and fair elections and a Parliament to check the powers of the executive? That’s the real question,” he said.

In all, the new Cabinet includes 11 new ministers, only three of whom remained in Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation. In the weeks since liberation, a kind of breach has grown between those who stayed behind and those who fled the country, with the so-called “insiders” demanding a greater say in government because of the lessons learned during the occupation.

The Cabinet includes no former members of the Kuwaiti resistance; indeed, the best-known resistance leader, Maj. Gen. Khalid Boodi, the top-ranking officer in the National Guard, abruptly resigned last week and left for the United States.

Kuwaitis who stayed behind had widely hoped he would be named the new defense minister. Ali al Sabah al Salim, who was named to the post, is a popular former governor of the community of Ahmadi and a former air force captain. He, like the new foreign minister, is a cousin of the crown prince.