The US ambassador delivered a blunt warning to Iraqi leaders that they risk losing US support unless they establish a national unity government with the police and keep the army out of the hands of religious parties.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Monday delivered the warning as another 24 people, including a US soldier, died in a string of bombings, underscoring the need for the country to establish a government capable of winning the trust of all communities and ending the violence.
Such a government is also essential to the US strategy for handing over security to Iraqi soldiers and police so the 138,000 US troops can go home.
But talks among Iraqi parties that won parliament seats in the Dec. 15 election have stalled over deep divisions among Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
During a rare news conference, Khalilzad said division among the country's sectarian and ethnic communities was "the fundamental problem in Iraq," fueling the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency and the wave of reprisal killings.
"To overcome this there is a need for a government of national unity," which "is the difference between what exists now and the next government," he said.
The outgoing government is dominated by Shiites and Kurds.
Khalilzad said Iraq's next Cabinet ministers, particularly those heading the Interior and Defense ministries, "have to be people who are nonsectarian, broadly acceptable and who are not tied to militias" run by political parties.
Otherwise, he warned that "Iraq faces the risk of warlordism that Afghanistan went through for a period."
To underscore his remarks, Khalilzad reminded the Iraqis that the US has spent billions to build up Iraq's police and army and said "we are not going to invest the resources of the American people and build forces that are run by people who are sectarian" and tied to the militias -- some of which the ambassador said received "arms and training" from Iran.
There was no response from al-Jaafari's government to Khalilzad's warning, but a prominent Shiite politician, Jalaladin al-Saghir, said the comments were "unacceptable" and constituted interference in the affairs of a sovereign state.
``We all want a national unity government and the U.S. ambassador is no more eager than we are to reach such a government,'' al-Saghir said.
``It is the Americans who push toward sectarianism by their ever-changing points of view. We feel uneasy about some of the U.S. agenda,'' he said.
In the latest bloodshed, a US soldier was killed on Monday by a roadside bomb near Karbala, about 80km southwest of Baghdad.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt on a bus on Monday in Baghdad killing 12 people and wounding 15, police said.
Earlier, a bomb exploded in central Baghdad, killing at least four men and wounding 14, police said.
In Mosul, northwest of Baghdad, a suicide attacker blew himself up in a restaurant packed with policemen eating breakfast, killing at least five people and wounding 21 officials said.
The Shura Council for Mujahedeen in Iraq claimed responsibility in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site, saying one of the "lions of monotheism" attacked the restaurant because it was "frequented by apostate policemen."
Two more civilians died when a car bomb exploded in Madain, southeast of Baghdad, police said. Eleven people were wounded.
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