Iraq's prime minister and his radical Shiite backers vowed to fight a bid by Sunni Arabs and Kurds to oust him, threatening to plunge the country into political turmoil, delay formation of a new government and undercut US plans to begin withdrawing troops this year.
Meanwhile, gunmen attacked the disabled car of Iraq's top Sunni politician, Iraqi Accordance Front leader Adnan al-Dulaimi, killing one bodyguard and wounding five after al-Dulaimi sped away in another vehicle. It was not clear whether the assault was an assassination attempt, and the Sunni leader refused to blame anyone. Altogether, 39 people died on Thursday in a new round of violence.
A coalition of Sunni, Kurdish and secular parties formally asked the Shiite bloc Thursday to withdraw its nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari for another term. The prime minister's adviser, Haider al-Ibadi, insisted the bloc would stick by its candidate.
Many Sunnis blame al-Jaafari for failing to rein in commandos of the Shiite-led Interior Ministry. And Kurds accuse al-Jaafari of dragging his heels on resolving their claims around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Iraqi troops and police patrolled the deserted streets of Baghdad yesterday after the government imposed a daytime traffic curfew to avert violence between Sunnis and Shiites on the Muslim day of prayer.
Al-Jaafari warned clerics not to use "inflammatory" language from pulpits as he tried to rally Sunni and other leaders into a US-sponsored unity coalition to help staunch 10 days of sectarian bloodshed.
The main minority Sunni bloc ended a boycott of talks called in protest at reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques following the bombing of a Shiite shrine on Feb. 22 -- violence has killed at least about 500 people, even by conservative official accounts.
But after al-Jaafari hosted a late-night meeting on Thursday of the main parties elected to parliament in December, political sources said Sunnis, Kurds and other leaders were still pushing the dominant Shiite Alliance to ditch al-Jaafari as premier.
"The negotiations will go on but we still insist on removing Jaafari," said a senior official in the Sunnis' Iraqi Accordance Front.
Al-Dulaimi was at the talks at al-Jaafari's office after escaping the attack on his car.
Critics accuse al-Jaafari, a soft-spoken Islamist doctor, of being ineffectual in combatting rebel violence and economic collapse in his year in power as interim prime minister. Some, including US officials, look askance at his ties to Iran.
Since Sunni Arabs took part in the US-sponsored election in December, US President George W. Bush has been pushing hard for the ruling Shiites to bring them into a national coalition.
He says that could bring stability and let him start bringing home some of the 133,000 US soldiers now in Iraq. He said this week that Iraqis had a choice between "chaos or unity."
Al-Jaafari made a late-night appearance on state television to urge religious leaders to defuse sectarian passions from the pulpit:
"The clerics on Friday must express themselves in the language of national unity," he said.
"We will take firm action against inflammatory rhetoric," he said.
Traffic was banned in Baghdad but people would be able to walk to weekly prayers, officials said -- similar to a three-day curfew last weekend that helped damp down the initial violence.
After a bomb on a minibus in his impoverished Sadr City bastion in Baghdad killed five people, Sadr's Mehdi Army militia said it would defend its neighborhoods.
But the US military, which mauled Sadr's militia in two anti-US uprisings in 2004, warned Sadr's forces.
"We are not going to allow him to take control of security of any area across Iraq, nor would the Iraqi government," Major General Rick Lynch said.
Al-Jaafari has ordered thousands of troops and police onto the streets of Baghdad, backed by US soldiers, but their effectiveness is untested and their loyalties are uncertain in the face of sectarian militias to which some once belonged.
Fearful of reprisal attacks, some Baghdad residents have thrown up barricades. Others are leaving their homes.
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