BAGHDAD, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi cabinet is likely to be formed within this week although the key portfolios of interior and defense ministries have remained vacant till now, a Shiite lawmaker said on Sunday.

   "Hopefully, the cabinet list will be presented to parliament within this week," Bahaa al-Aaraji, a lawmaker from the largest Shiite bloc in the parliament, told reporters in Baghdad.

   He said that the hotly-contested interior and defense portfolios, still vacant at present, might go to Prime Minister-designate and prominent Shiite leader Nuri al-Maliki until independent figures were named later.

   The Sunni Arab bloc, meanwhile, threatened to withdraw from the political process if failing to get what it said its right share in the coming new government.

   "If we don't get our right share, we will review our participation in the entire political process," warned Salman al-Jumayli, a legislator from the Sunni National Consensus Front.

   "We will continue negotiations to form the government and we demand to take the ministries of education, health and planning," he said.

   "We are still waiting for answers for our demands," he added.

   Jumaili also said that his party would also seek the interior ministry if the Shiites took the defense ministry.

   "There has to be a balance in everything, especially in the security forces to keep them away from any sectarian political links," he said.

   Sunni Arabs' participation in the political process is widely seen as vital to help curb rampaging insurgency in the violence-plagued country.

   Many Iraqis have accused the current Shiite-led interior ministry of running death squads against the Sunnis.

   On Friday, the Fadhila party, a small Shiite faction within the dominant Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, withdrew from talks on forming the country's first full-term government since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.

   The party slammed the ongoing negotiations for being subject to external pressure, particularly from the U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

   Fadhila won 15 seats in the 275-member parliament in the December general lections. Enditem