The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Kuwait City

Health Minister Maasuma al-Mubarak, Kuwait's first female cabinet member, has resigned following a deadly hospital fire, preempting plans by Islamist MPs to call her to account in parliament The government of the oil-rich Gulf emirate announced on Saturday that Mubarak's resignation, tendered on Friday night, had been accepted. Hours earlier, two Sunni Islamist lawmakers tabled a request to grill her over Thursday's blaze, which killed two patients and injured 19 others, as well as over alleged financial abuses in her ministry and deteriorating health services. Mubarak made history when she became the first female minister in the conservative Arab state in June 2005, taking the planning and administrative development portfolio, one month after parliament passed a bill granting women political rights. The US-educated liberal and leading women's rights activist, who wears the Muslim hijab or head cover, has since also served as communications minister and was given the health portfolio in the cabinet formed last March.

Mubarak, in her late 50s, also became the first woman MP when she joined the government, because cabinet ministers automatically become members of parliament in Kuwait