Shiite bloc may leave government

A key Shiite Muslim bloc in Iraq’s government pledged Sunday to quit over Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s refusal to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a move that would further weaken the country’s leadership at a time of soaring sectarian violence.

The threat came on the heels of another bloody day in the capital, where at least 37 people died in bombings that underscored the failings of a U.S.-Iraqi security plan now in its third month. The victims included 17 Iraqis killed in a crowded market in a Shiite-dominated neighborhood, where two car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously. As people fled the chaos, mortar rounds rained down on them. Fifty people were wounded.

Nine more people were killed as they stood surveying the damage from a roadside bomb that had exploded in Baghdad’s central Karada district. The bomb caused no casualties, but another one went off shortly afterward outside a popular smoothie shop, near where the crowd had gathered, causing the deaths and 17 injuries.

Five people also were killed in Karada when a minivan exploded, and six were killed in a Shiite neighborhood in southwest Baghdad when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a taxi.

The incidents all bore the hallmarks of the car bombings and suicide attacks blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents.

Political parties loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr blame the U.S. troop presence for the ongoing bloodshed. Maliki faces a major blow if he loses their backing. The bloc holds six Cabinet positions and about 30 seats in the parliament, where it has greatly bolstered the prime minister’s Shiite-led alliance.

A fragile alliance

The bloc’s ties to Maliki have helped ensure Sadr’s cooperation with the security plan, despite the cleric’s fierce opposition to its U.S. enforcers. But continued attacks by suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents on Shiite targets, and the arrests of some Sadr militia leaders in the security sweep, could prompt at least some in the militia to take up arms again if they are no longer hamstrung by political considerations.

“It is true the American troops have helped the Iraqis in getting rid of Saddam [Hussein] and his regime. However, we have reached a point where there are no means of understanding between the Americans and the demands of the Iraqi people,” Ghufran Saidi, one of the bloc’s members of parliament, said Sunday. “We have found that there is no use for our staying” in the government, he said.

The Sadr bloc leader, Nassar Rubaie, said as long as U.S. forces were in Iraq, the Iraqi government could not make decisions on how to safeguard the country.

“The [Iraqi] government has failed to carry out its duties and has been unable to build good Iraqi security forces” because of U.S. control, Rubaie said. “Security is still in the hands of the invaders.”

Lawmakers supportive of Sadr have staged government walkouts in the past, most recently in November to protest Maliki’s meeting with President Bush in Jordan. That boycott lasted two months.

Abu Firas Matyri said the bloc had no intention of giving up its parliament seats but would resign from the Cabinet because it did not want its ministers held responsible for the failure of the security plan and other problems. He said they hoped other political blocs would do the same.

Key legislation stalled

Maliki’s government is struggling to move forward on so-called benchmark laws backed by the Bush administration and considered key to ending the polarization of Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups. They include measures to ensure fair distribution of oil wealth and to restore jobs to ostracized officials of Hussein’s former ruling Baath Party.

As long as violence continues to preoccupy the government, there seems little chance politicians will focus on such legislation. Yet without such legislation, observers note, there is little chance of stopping the violence.

“If we do not get the benchmark laws and constitutional reforms toward political reconciliation and a stable political system, then the best we can hope for is to continue to stagger along with levels of violence, fear, bitterness and despair,” said Larry Diamond, who served as an advisor in 2004 to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority that was then leading Iraq. “I think the violence can be, should be, a stimulus to getting reforms accomplished. But the politicians still do not see that they have no other choice.”

The latest violence was not confined to the capital. In the northern city of Mosul, an Iraqi army official said four people, including two Iraqi soldiers, died when attackers tried to detonate car bombs inside a military base in the southern part of the city. Brig. Gen. Khalil Ahmad said one car bomb blew a hole in a concrete blast wall surrounding the base. A second exploded short of its target, a building inside the base.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of three soldiers, including one who died Sunday when a patrol came under fire in southern Baghdad. No other details were given. Two other soldiers died Thursday, the military said: one while on patrol in Tarmiya, a mainly Sunni town 25 miles north of the capital, and another from a noncombat injury.

At least 3,301 U.S. troops have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks war-related deaths.

North of Baghdad, two British soldiers died when two British military helicopters collided. The military said the Puma transport helicopters were taking part in a U.S.-led mission and that the crash appeared to be an accident. The helicopters are capable of carrying 16 passengers and three crew members each. The deaths brought to 142 the number of British soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began, according to the website.

Hagel in Baghdad

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) was in Baghdad wrapping up a visit that included a day in strife-torn Al Anbar province and discussions with Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Hagel, who is considering a run for the presidency in 2008, has been critical of Bush’s Iraq policy and has said the $100 billion in emergency funding requested by the administration to prosecute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be conditional. But he declined to say in response to reporters’ questions what those conditions and benchmarks should be.

“We can’t continually stay in Iraq the way we have been in Iraq,” Hagel said. “It was never intended to be an open-ended commitment.”

Hagel was asked to comment on the recent visit to Baghdad by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a supporter of Bush’s Iraq strategy and a declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Under heavy military guard and wearing a Kevlar vest, McCain took a stroll through a downtown market when he was in the capital this month and declared security greatly improved. Critics of the war accused McCain of painting an overly rosy picture of things on the ground.

“We did no shopping while we were here,” Hagel said, smiling. “Iraq still has great challenges ahead. Security is still an issue.”

susman@latimes.com

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Times staff writers Chris Kraul, Saif Hameed and Suhail Ahmad in Baghdad, special correspondent Ruaa al-Zarary in Mosul and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.