Pressure on Shiites Is Giving the U.S. New Ally in Sunnis

Rice Visit Seen as Highlighting a Shift

BAGHDAD, April 12 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip here this month to pressure Iraqi leaders to form a new government sparked a slew of familiar complaints about U.S. meddling in Iraqi affairs.

One party official described the visit as "manipulation" that cheated the politicians out of exercising their newly won democratic rights.

The spokesman for an influential cleric called her presence "unwelcome" and accused her of "suspicious intentions."

Less familiar, however, was the source of the charges: Iraq's Shiite Muslim leaders, close U.S. allies since the 2003 invasion. Meanwhile, Sunni Arab politicians, some of whom dined with Rice on her only night in Baghdad, made a point of thanking her and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for what they called their newfound evenhandedness.

"I looked Condi in the eye and told her, 'Your ambassador shows tremendous courage and is doing a hell of good job in Iraq,' " said Tariq al-Hashimi, secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which like almost all Sunni parties boycotted Iraq's January 2005 elections and has denounced the American occupation at every turn. Before that night, he said, he had never met the secretary of state.

In recent weeks there has been stepped-up pressure on Iraq's Shiite leaders, including strong statements about the dangers posed by Shiite militias, less-than-subtle discouragement of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari's bid to keep his post and accusations against Iraq's Shiite-ruled neighbor, Iran, of fomenting instability.

A joint U.S.-Iraqi army raid last month on a religious and political complex in Baghdad, which included an office of Jafari's Dawa party and an alleged hide-out for a Shiite militia, further inflamed the rift. Some Shiite leaders have complained openly of betrayal by the United States and compared the recent U.S. diplomatic stance to the Americans' refusal to actively support an abortive Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991.

"There's lots of talks in the street and among politicians who see that lately the Americans are hard on the Shiites and favoring the Sunnis by rewarding them and hoping they are going to lay down their weapons and stop being the resistance. There is fear and concern," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, an adviser to Jafari.

In the zero-sum game of Iraqi politics, in which someone who applies pressure to one group can become the new friend of another, Sunni Arab political leaders are embracing American policy as never before.

Shiite politicians remained deadlocked Wednesday about their choice for a new prime minister, delaying the formation of a new national unity government that the United States has said will help stem rampant instability. Despite flagging support, Jafari has said he will not step aside.

Meanwhile, Sunni parties, most of which oppose Jafari's nomination, are biding their time, all but assured of several ministerial posts when the dispute is settled.

Links between the United States and Iraqi Shiites date to the 1990s, when U.S. officials began plotting Hussein's overthrow with an Iraqi exile community dominated by such Shiites as Jafari, Ayad Allawi, who later became Iraq's transitional prime minister, and Ahmed Chalabi, whose organization provided prewar intelligence that helped build the case against Hussein but is now widely disputed.