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Iraq

Iraq roils as stalemate holds

BAGHDAD - The U.S. ambassador held talks with a top Shiite leader Tuesday as Iraqi factions wrangled over a new government. The prime minister declared he would not be "blackmailed" into stepping aside, and the Shiite majority balked at convening the Parliament.

The inability to agree is threatening to crush American hopes of beginning a troop pullout this summer as violence rages on. Bombings, mortar blasts and gunfire killed 19 more people throughout the country Tuesday, and police also reported finding four more bullet-riddled bodies - two of them with their eyes gouged out.

Holding a first session of Parliament is a required step toward forming a new government. Fifteen days after the first meeting, Parliament is supposed to elect a new president - a job the incumbent, Jalal Talabani, wants to keep. In 15 more days, the Parliament is to approve the nominated prime minister and 30 days later must vote on his Cabinet.

Al-Jaafari declared Tuesday he would not be "blackmailed" into standing aside.

An evening meeting between the Kurdish faction in Parliament and the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance failed to break the impasse.

Underscoring U.S. concerns over the deteriorating political situation, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad held a meeting with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the powerful Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the two dominant parties in the Shiite coalition that won the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.

The U.S. Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for further information.

"PANDORA'S BOX': In an interview published Tuesday, Khalilzad said the 2003 U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein had opened a "Pandora's box" that could see the violence and turmoil now gripping Iraq turn into an all-out regional war if American troops are withdrawn too quickly.

"We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?" Khalilzad told the Los Angeles Times. "The way forward, in my view, is an effort to build bridges across (Iraq's) communities."

But narrowing differences among Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds has become an increasingly difficult task in the aftermath of the Feb. 22 bombing that destroyed the golden dome atop a Shiite shrine in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra.

U.N. REPORT: In a report Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said U.S.-led coalition forces and Iraq's authorities may be violating international law by arbitrarily detaining thousands of people.

The report, which studied the situation in Iraq over the last three months, said Iraq's prison system remains a major concern and lamented that an investigation into allegations of torture in Iraqi Interior Ministry jails had not yet been made public as promised.

Annan's criticism of Multinational Forces and the Iraqi authorities in responding to violence was among the strongest he has made, although many of his claims were not new. He said the detainment of thousands of Iraqis "constitutes de facto arbitrary detention."

RUMSFELD ACCUSES IRAN OF TROUBLEMAKING, DENIES CIVIL WAR: Raising a new complaint about Iran, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused Tehran of dispatching elements of its Revolutionary Guard to stir trouble inside Iraq.

At the same time, he rejected the idea that Iraq has slipped into civil war, asserting that media reports have overstated recent violence there.

Rumsfeld offered few details concerning his allegation of interference by Iran, which fought a nearly decadelong war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s and shares a largely unguarded border.

"They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," he told a Pentagon news conference. "And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment."

Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have previously complained of Iranian complicity in the movement of explosives and bombmaking material across the border into Iraq, but Rumsfeld had not mentioned Iranian forces before.

Rumsfeld also was asked about violence in Iraq since an attack last month on a revered Shiite mosque touched off a wave of reprisals between religious sects.

"I do not believe they are in a civil war today," Rumsfeld said.

He added, "There has always been a potential for civil war."

[Last modified March 8, 2006, 01:43:15]