Iraqi parliament to convene as crisis grows; blast kills 12

Iraqi federal policemen patrol in the town of Taji, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, June 26, 2014. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took over the country's second largest city 10 days ago. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Mideast nations on Wednesday against taking new military action in Iraq that might heighten already-tense sectarian divisions, as reports surfaced that Syria launched airstrikes across the border and Iran has been flying surveillance drones over the neighboring country. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Iraqi federal policemen patrol in the town of Taji, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, June 26, 2014. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took over the country's second largest city 10 days ago. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Mideast nations on Wednesday against taking new military action in Iraq that might heighten already-tense sectarian divisions, as reports surfaced that Syria launched airstrikes across the border and Iran has been flying surveillance drones over the neighboring country. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's vice president called on the nation's parliament Thursday to convene next week, taking the first step toward forming a new government to present a united front against a rapidly advancing Sunni insurgency.

The move came on a day that a bombing killed 12 people in a Baghdad Shiite neighborhood and police found eight more bullet-riddled bodies south of the capital.

Vice President Khudeir al-Khuzaie, who is acting president, made the call as Britain's top diplomat, visiting Iraq, urged its leaders to put aside their differences for the good of the nation. And in Paris, Secretary of State John Kerry met with the United States' top Sunni state allies in the Middle East to consider how to confront the growing turmoil.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led political bloc won the most seats in April 30 elections -- 92 out of 328 -- but he needs support from other parties for a majority that would give him the right to govern.

An increasing number of critics, both in Iraq and abroad, want him to step down, saying his failure to promote national reconciliation fueled the insurgency by needlessly angering the Sunni minority group.

Iraq's powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr made a televised statement late Wednesday in which he called for a national unity government of "new faces" representing all groups.

Al-Sadr, whose followers fought fiercely against both U.S. forces and Sunni extremists during the height of the war nearly a decade ago, also vowed to "shake the ground" under the feet of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida breakaway group that has threatened to advance toward Baghdad and holy Shiite cities in the south.

Other prominent Shiite leaders pushed Thursday for al-Maliki's removal, including some of his former allies, who increasingly believe he cannot lead an inclusive government that can draw Sunnis away from support for the fighters.

"It will be very difficult for Maliki to keep his position," said Abdul Karim al-Anzi, a former minister of national security and a prominent Shiite lawmaker in al-Maliki's State of Law coalition. "The situation is very complicated, and the talks are still far away from reaching a solution. The prime minister keeps saying he has the biggest bloc, but the others are not satisfied to see him keeping his position. Kurds as well as Sunnis are asking to replace him. The Sunnis and Kurds will have serious objections to him."

Hussein al-Muraibi, a leader of the Fadhila party, also part of al-Maliki's bloc, said there was no way to recruit Sunnis to a new government without replacing al-Maliki.

"We want to change Maliki as a good-will gesture," he said, stressing that he was only expressing his opinion. "The battle is partially political, and the enemies are using Maliki and what he did as a pretext to mobilize people inside and outside Iraq against the Shiites and the political process."

Mahmoud Othman, a longtime Kurdish politician who did not run for the parliament in the recent elections, was pessimistic about the possibility of a deal to replace al-Maliki, and warned that the parliament might end up stalemated despite the insurgency threat.

"That would be a disaster," he said. "The blocs, they don't care about the country, they care only for themselves."

Some Iraqi politicians favor forming an interim government that could provide leadership until a more permanent solution can be found. Al-Maliki, however, has insisted the constitutional process must be allowed to proceed.

In a statement, al-Khuzaie ordered the new parliament to hold its first session Tuesday, with the eldest member presiding as chairman.

Constitutionally the next step would be to elect a speaker and two deputies, then within 30 days to choose a new president who then has 15 days to ask the largest bloc to choose a prime minister and form the new government. The prime minister-designate has 30 days to present his Cabinet to the parliament.

Diplomats Hold Talks

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, meeting with al-Maliki in Baghdad, said at a news conference Thursday that "we believe the urgent priority must be to form an inclusive government ... that can command the support of all Iraqis and work to stop terrorists and their terrible crimes."

Hague's trip follows a visit by Kerry, who earlier this week delivered a similar message and warned that Washington is prepared to take military action even if Baghdad delays political changes.

The intense diplomatic push underscores the growing international concern over the gains by fighters led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Sunni extremist group that has seized large swaths of Iraq and seeks to carve out a purist Islamic enclave across both sides of the Syria-Iraq border.

In Paris, Kerry said the threat posed by the Islamic State reaches beyond Iraq and Syria, the two countries where it is currently based.

"The move of ISIL concerns every single country here," Kerry said at the start of the meeting held at the U.S. ambassador's residence. He said his talks with foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also would touch on a "number of critical issues."

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal called the discussions "of immense importance for our countries."

"I think with the cooperation between these countries we can affect, hopefully, the situation in a better way," al-Faisal said.

Iraq's Sunni neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia, have long opposed al-Maliki. Last week, the Saudis publicly called for him to go.

Some U.S. officials have called the Saudi position counterproductive, because it might stoke Shiite nationalism that al-Maliki could exploit.

Douglas Ollivant, a former director for Iraq on the National Security Council, agreed.

"I can't think of a better way to make sure he remains than to have the Saudis insisting that he go," said Ollivant, now a managing partner at Mantid International. "File that under 'not helpful.'"

At Thursday's meeting, the Arab diplomats did not commit to sending any military assistance to Baghdad to fight the Sunni insurgency, as the U.S. is doing. In Washington, the Pentagon said Thursday that four teams of Army special forces had arrived in Baghdad, raising the number of American troops there to 90.

The U.S. special forces will be advising and assisting Iraqi counterterrorism forces to repel the insurgency. U.S. officials said they will be in operations centers in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

A Pentagon official in Washington also said Thursday that armed Predator drone patrols had started over Baghdad, an operation meant to offer added protection to the first U.S. military assessment teams there.

The Predator drones, equipped with Hellfire missiles, will augment about 40 unarmed reconnaissance flights that a combination of manned and unmanned U.S. aircraft are flying over Iraq each day. The armed drones departed from an air base in Kuwait, the Pentagon official said.

More Bloodshed

Violence continued across Iraq on Thursday. Authorities found eight men believed to be in their 30s and 40s who had been shot to death in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

The officials said the men had no identification cards with them, reminiscent of the city's sectarian bloodletting by Shiites and Sunnis in 2006, when extremists would take the identification to dehumanize those killed or to use as trophies. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.

Shortly before sunset, a bomb exploded near a clothing shop in Baghdad's northern Shiite neighborhood of Khazimiyah, killing 12 people and wounding 32, said police and hospital officials.

In northern Salahuddin province, officials said the Iraqi army scored a success against militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, striking well behind the lines of the militants' advance and recapturing the grounds of Salahuddin University in Tikrit city.

Police officials and eyewitnesses in Tikrit said Iraqi warplanes first bombed the group's positions on the university campus, and then Iraqi army paratroopers were dropped in to take control of it.

While the Islamic State occupies most of Tikrit city, the Iraqi military controls a large air base, Camp Speicher, on the outskirts. Iraqi military officials said "tens" of militants had been killed and their commander wounded, although he escaped.

Elsewhere in northern Iraq, an insurgent artillery offensive against Christian villages on Wednesday sent thousands of people fleeing from their homes, seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish enclave. The shelling of the cluster of villages happened in an area known as Hamdaniya, 45 miles from the frontier of the self-ruled Kurdish region.

While many villagers appeared to have been granted access by daybreak, hundreds of Shiite refugees were still hoping to be let in but were facing delays at a checkpoint because they lacked sponsors on the other side.

One of the refugees, who gave only her nickname of Umm Alaa, fearing retribution, said she and hundreds of others left their village of Quba and a nearby hamlet during the militants' initial assault on June 10 to seek shelter in communities that were then attacked Wednesday.

Another, who agreed to be identified only as Huda, tried to calm her 10-year-old son Mohammed, who was thirsty and crying.

"They will kill every Shiite man, and they will burn every Shiite house," Huda said. "Nobody has stayed in Quba. Every single Shiite has left."

With Iraq's divided sects focused on self-interests, the country's top Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, vowed Thursday to maintain control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, seized by Kurdish forces, ostensibly to defend it from the Islamic State fighters.

"We will remain here together in Kirkuk," Barzani declared during a tour of the city, which the Kurds have long sought to incorporate into their self-rule region.

Information for this article was contributed by Sinan Salaheddin, Diaa Hadid, Hamza Hendawi, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sameer N. Yacoub, Lara Jakes and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press; by Rod Nordland, Suadad Al-Salhy, and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times; and by Anne Gearan of The Washington Post.

A Section on 06/27/2014

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