Iraqi Shiite Bloc Showing Cracks

Only days after deciding to nominate incumbent Ibrahim Jafari to continue as Iraq’s prime minister, his United Iraqi Alliance coalition on Wednesday was showing signs of fraying.

Leaders of the Al Fadila al Islamiya party, which is associated with radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr and had offered its own candidate for the post, threatened Wednesday to break from the dominant alliance if the UIA did not make more overtures to Sunni Arabs, restrain Shiite paramilitary groups and rule in a more collaborative style.

As legislators prepare to form Iraq’s first permanent government since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003, the Fadila ultimatum suggested that Jafari’s nomination, approved by a one-vote margin among the coalition’s 128 members of parliament, was causing tension within the Shiite-led alliance.

“We want Jafari to agree to deal with the security situation, the militias and to find a solution to all of this sectarian strife,” said Hasan Shammari, a spokesman for Fadila, known in English as the Islamic Virtue Party. “We are seeking a government that will represent all segments of Iraqi society -- that will accept Shiites, Sunnis, secularists and Kurdish people. If the UIA is unable to do this, we will remove ourselves from the alliance.”

Fadila’s threat shows how difficult it will be for Jafari, a Shiite theologian who has presided over a year of gas and oil shortages, police abuse scandals and sectarian killings, to keep the Shiite bloc in line over the next four years.

As the nominee of the largest bloc in the new 275-seat legislature, Jafari would probably still become prime minister even without the support of Fadila, which holds about 15 seats. He retains the backing of the two largest Shiite parties and several Kurdish and secular blocs. The parliament must select a presidential council, which then approves the prime minister and his Cabinet.

But a defection by Fadila could make the contentious negotiations over Cabinet posts even more difficult and delay the formation of Iraq’s permanent government.

Despite their party’s links to Sadr and the cleric’s Al Mahdi militia, Fadila leaders said Wednesday that paramilitary groups were destabilizing Iraq.

Party leader Nadhem Jabari, who ran against Jafari in the Shiite bloc parliamentary balloting held Sunday, told an Iraqi newspaper Tuesday that the alliance needed to work harder to broaden its appeal and include Sunnis, a minority in Iraq that ruled the country under Hussein. Sunnis are also the main supporters of the insurgency.

U.S. officials also have called for a broad-based government representing all of Iraq’s ethnic and religious factions, arguing that inclusion of Sunnis is crucial to the success of the country’s nascent political process and to the quelling of violence.

“I certainly see the political will in the different corners and the appreciation for a national unity government,” said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I hear more people talk about cross-sectarian cooperation than I have ever heard.”

But Khudayr Khuzai, a legislator with the Islamic Dawa Party, one of the coalition’s larger Shiite groups, discounted Fadila’s threat as political posturing in advance of negotiations over Cabinet posts and expressed doubts about whether the group would break ranks with the Shiite bloc.

“The UIA is the water in which we all swim,” Khuzai said. “Once one chooses to leave the water, his political life will come to an end.”

Meanwhile, violence continued to sweep the nation Wednesday, killing at least 13 Iraqis. A bomb detonated in a Baghdad street killed three girls and a boy walking to school, according to an Associated Press report. The children were between 10 and 14 and included three siblings.

A car bomb killed four policemen who were passing in a convoy in northern Iraq, and gunmen killed a police captain and his driver in Baghdad’s Sadiya neighborhood.

A car bomb near Baghdad’s University of Technology killed two Iraqis, and another person died in a drive-by shooting in western Iraq.

Police also said that the bodies of four men were found near a Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad. Each man had been shot in the head.

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Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi, Suhail Ahmad and Shamil Aziz, as well as Times wire services, contributed to this report.