Iraq's Parliament Leader Tries to End Political Deadlock

Three U.S. Soldiers Among Scores Killed in Various Attacks

BAGHDAD, April 12 -- The Iraqi legislature will meet next week in an attempt to break the months-long deadlock over the formation of a new national government, the acting head of parliament said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Adnan al-Pachachi, the acting speaker of parliament, said he was ordering lawmakers to meet on Monday in the hope that the deadline would force rival Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties to form a government that fairly represented all three groups.

"To protect the credibility of the democratic process, I have decided to set up a date for the parliament to convene," Pachachi said. "I have discussed this issue with the representatives of the political blocs, and I have sensed the will to push the political process forward from all."

The ethnic and sectarian groups have been at loggerheads since Dec. 15, when a coalition of Shiite religious parties won the most votes in national elections but failed to win a majority in parliament. Though the Shiites won 130 seats in the 275-seat body, they still require the help of at least one of the other groups to select a prime minister, one of the first major steps toward forming a functional government.

But the Shiite alliance's nominee for the top post, incumbent Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, has succeeded only in uniting almost every other party against him. Kurds, Sunnis and secular Iraqis have demanded that the coalition choose another candidate, saying that Jafari has proved to be a weak leader during his year in office. The issue has even fractured the Shiite alliance itself, with the powerful Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq supporting an alternate candidate and the faction of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr still backing Jafari.

The parliament's opening session in March did nothing to resolve the impasse. Since then the political process has been frozen, to the mounting frustration of politicians, the Iraqi public and U.S. officials.

In the meantime, Sunnis and Shiites have taken their feud to the streets. Since the destruction of a Shiite mosque in Samarra in February, more than 1,000 people, most of them Sunnis, have been abducted and found dead in deserted parts of the capital and elsewhere in the country, while roadside bombs and suicide attacks have continued to take a toll on U.S. troops and Iraqi soldiers, police and civilians.

On Wednesday, a car bomb exploded amid a crowd leaving evening prayers at a Shiite mosque in the town of Huwaider, near Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad. Ali Khayam, a spokesman for the Diyala provincial police, said the blast killed at least 20 people and wounded 40.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said Iraqi police had discovered the bodies of 11 people who had been beheaded and shot in areas in and near Baghdad. Three roadside and car bomb explosions also killed at least eight people in the capital, police Maj. Mohammed Sultan said, and police officials said 14 people were killed in other bombings and shootings around the country.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed Wednesday in two roadside bomb attacks south and east of Baghdad, U.S. military authorities said in a statement, and the military also announced that a soldier in the 101st Airborne Division, based in northern Iraq, died of non-combat injuries on April 10. Thirty-five U.S. service members have died so far in April, exceeding the total for all of March.

Iraqi politicians and U.S. officials have said they hope a political solution can curb the violence, and Pachachi, a former diplomat in his early eighties who is affiliated with a secular coalition, said he was optimistic that the political factions would resolve the question of who would be prime minister before Monday's meeting.

"The most important thing is that the Iraqi people want to see the parliament and the political groups starting to work as soon as possible. And with a specific deadline, the political leaders will be encouraged to work twice as hard to agree," he said.

If they do not, Pachachi said he hoped the parliament would choose a three-member presidency council consisting of the president and two deputies, who would then have two weeks to pick a prime minister.

Salam Maliki, a spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance and a member of Sadr's pro-Jafari faction, appeared to be leaning in the same direction. He said in an interview that his party might opt to choose the holders of other top positions, such as the presidency, before they tackled the tougher dispute over the prime minister.

"We and the alliance are still committed to the nomination of Dr. Ibrahim Jafari," Maliki said.

Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi, Omar Fekeiki, K.I. Ibrahim and Bassam Sebti in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Najaf, Dlovan Brwari in Mosul and Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.