Pressure mounted yesterday on Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to stand down, as Kurdish and some Shiite officials said Iraq's new parliament would be ready to convene within days.
A recent surge of sectarian killings has complicated already snarled negotiations about a new government, which has prevented parliament from meeting since it was elected on Dec. 15. The vote was certified last month.
Early yesterday, police reported commandos from the Shiite-led interior ministry stormed a Sunni mosque in west Baghdad, killing three people and injuring seven in a 25-minute gunbattle. The reason for the clash was not immediately known.
Interior Ministry Major Falah al-Mohamadawi denied commandos were involved.
"There is no indication in our records that interior ministry's police commandos carried out the raid. The claims are not true," he said.
US officials say a coalition government that includes all Iraq's ethnic and religious communities is essential for stabilizing the country and allowing US and other foreign forces to start pulling out in the summer.
As the largest bloc in parliament, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance gets the first chance to form a government, but it does not have sufficient seats to do so on its own. Sunni, Kurdish and some secular parties are now pressing the Shiite Alliance to withdraw their nomination of al-Jaafari for a new term. He has served as prime minister in the transitional government that took power in April.
The Sunni Arab minority blames the prime minister for failing to control Shiite militiamen who attacked Sunni mosques and clerics after the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra. More than 500 people were killed in the violence that followed, according to police and hospital accounts.
Khalaf al-Olayan, a leader of the main Sunni bloc, said Iraq has gone from "bad to worse."
"Al-Jaafari's government failed to solve the chaos that followed the Samarra explosions and did not take any measures to solve the security crisis that could have pushed the country into civil war," he said in comments posted on the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front Web site.
Kurds are angry because they believe al-Jaafari is holding up resolution of their claims to control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
``If al-Jaafari tries to form a government, he will not get any kind of cooperation,'' said Mahmoud Othman, a leading figure in parliament's Kurdish bloc.
President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, entered the fray on Saturday, saying the Shiite Alliance should choose another candidate for the sake of consensus.
"I want to be clear, it is not against Dr. al-Jaafari as a person. He has been my friend for 25 years," Talabani told reporters.
The Alliance itself is divided about who should be prime minister: Al-Jaafari won the nomination by a single vote at a Feb. 12 Shiite caucus. Some members are troubled by al-Jaafari's ties to radical young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose support was key in defeating Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the choice of powerful Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.
Al-Sadr and al-Hakim, who both have powerful militias behind them, are frequently at odds politically.
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