BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s outgoing interior minister predicted yesterday that his country’s emerging police and army may be capable of securing the nation in 18 months, saying his officers are beginning to take over from coalition forces. Insurgents, meanwhile, targeted Shiite pilgrims, setting off two blasts that killed at least three people.

The interim interior minister, Falah al-Naqib’s, comments came as security was heightened in the already heavily fortified Green Zone, where the National Assembly will hold its long-awaited second session today to choose a speaker and two deputies.

Negotiators haggled over who would get the parliament speaker job, considering interim President al-Yawer. They hope the inclusion of Sunni Arabs like him in the new government will help quell the Sunni-led insurgency.

But Mr. al-Yawer turned down the post and instead asked the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance for the vice president’s post, said Ali Faisal, political coordinator for the Shiite Political Council, which is part of the alliance.

Alliance members agreed to nominate former nuclear scientist Hussain al-Shahristani as one of two deputy Assembly speakers and interim Finance Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi as one of two vice presidents. Alliance negotiator Jawad al-Maliki said the Sunni Arabs were expected to name a candidate for the Assembly speaker position today.

Mr. al-Naqib predicted that insurgents will target today’s National Assembly meeting – only the second since its members were elected in the nation’s first free election in 50 years.

Roads were blocked off yesterday, and security was tightened around the area, already surrounded by concrete blast walls and barbed wire. Several mortar rounds slammed into the banks of the Tigris River, just short of the Green Zone.

Underscoring tensions with the country’s majority Shiites, insurgents set off two explosions targeting Shiite pilgrims heading to Karbala for a major religious ceremony.

In Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up near a police patrol protecting the pilgrims, Captain Muthana al-Furati of the Hillah police force said. Two policemen were killed.

The other bombing took place at the Imam al-Khedher shrine compound in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad. The attack killed one pilgrim and wounded two others resting at the compound, Colonel Abdullah Hessoni Abdullah said.

In a news conference, Mr. al-Naqib outlined progress by the country’s security forces, predicting that American troops would be able to begin pulling out of parts of the country. He said Iraqi police had better intelligence on insurgents and criminal gangs that have flourished since the March 2003 American-led invasion. The interior minister added that Iraq’s most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, “has been surrounded in more than one area, and we hope for the best.”