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BAGHDAD: Iraq's president put its prime minister under new pressure to quit today, saying his resignation would help persuade other parties to form a national unity government that could halt a slide towards civil war.
As at least 12 people were killed in new sectarian violence, the top US military commander in the Middle East called for a broad coalition of the kind Washington hopes can foster stability and allow it to start withdrawing its 133,000 troops.
Convening a first sitting of the new parliament elected in December, Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani added his public voice to pressure from Sunni, Kurdish and other leaders for Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to step aside.
"Opposing Jaafari's nomination is not a personal issue," he said. "It is in the interest of forming a government of national unity."
The Shi'ite United Alliance, by far the biggest bloc in the new parliament, nominated Jaafari to keep his job despite security and economic difficulties and criticism of his handling of violence that has killed more than 500 people since the destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine in Samarra on February 22.
Smaller factions are refusing to join a coalition he leads, however, and rival Shi'ite leaders are considering putting up a new nominee, political sources say.
Parliament is likely to sit around next Sunday, government sources say, but forming a government may take much longer.
"The United Alliance has the right to nominate the prime minister but parliament has to approve it," said Talabani.
The premier must be confirmed by a two-thirds majority.
US APPEAL
General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, met both Talabani and Jaafari in Baghdad: "The government of national unity must be formed to bring the country together," he said.
A mortar round landed in a crowded market near a bus station and killed seven people and wounded 20 in the town of Gisr Diyala near Salman Pak, just southeast of Baghdad, police said.
A car bomb near a police checkpoint in Salman Pak killed two civilians and wounded three police officers.
The area has seen heavy bloodshed in recent months, with guerrilla groups operating from hidden rural bases. At least 19 people were killed in a raid on a nearby town on Friday, including many Shi'ite migrant workers gunned down in a factory.
Two people were killed when gunmen opened fire on a Shi'ite mosque in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said.
Six policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Baquba 65km north of Baghdad, police said. A second roadside bomb in Baquba, killed one and wounded eight other civilians, police said.
MILITIA PLAN
Talabani and Shi'ite Interior Minister Bayan Jabor also called for sectarian and ethnic militias to join the US-trained security forces – something US officials in Baghdad have been long been urging.
Government leaders, including Talabani and Jabor, are in parties which have justified maintaining their own militia forces, however, and Jabor set no timetable for any change.
"There is no reasonable justification for any fear of the militias at the present time," Jabor said.
Sunni leaders have accused the government of condoning death squads targeting minority Sunnis and operating from inside the Shi'ite-controlled Interior Ministry. In the north, Sunni Arabs complain of the power of Kurdish peshmerga militias.
Militia leaders deny condoning any such violence.
Disparate Sunni insurgents groups which have fought US and government forces have lately been forming into their own more cohesive militia in western Iraq, militants and Sunni community leaders say, insisting they need to defend themselves.
The militia backgrounds of many existing police and troops has also left a question mark over their loyalties.
Daily life in Baghdad returned to something close to normal amid the political wrangling following the lifting of Friday's daytime curfew that banned vehicle traffic in an effort to avert violence around mosques on the Muslim day of prayer.
The bloodshed since February 22, however, has left many of the city's seven million residents fearful of their neighbours. Some have fled their homes and others are barricading neighbourhoods against outsiders. Most households have an automatic weapon.
While leaders, including US President George W Bush and the US commander in Iraq General George Casey, have said the crisis of the past 10 days is over, senior Iraqi politicians say privately they fear further bloodshed.
A possible partition of the country into three main regions, a Shi'ite south, Kurdish north and Sunni west, could be one outcome of a further slide towards civil war that would leave Baghdad as a battleground in the centre.
