BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite-led blocs on Tuesday gave themselves five days to pick a single candidate for prime minister, and one politician said the incumbent, Nuri al-Maliki, was in a strong position to gain a second term.
Members of the Iran-friendly Iraqi National Alliance (INA) and of Maliki’s State of Law coalition met in his office to try to end six months of political deadlock since the March vote.
They said afterwards they had decided to pick one candidate by consensus, and to abandon all coalition talks with other parties until they had a single nominee for prime minister.
"Doubtless all the indications suggest that Mr Maliki has the best chance," former deputy speaker of parliament and senior member of State of Law, Khalid al-Attiya, told Reuters.
The March 7 election produced no outright winner and as yet no new government, pitching Iraq into political uncertainty just as U.S. troops scaled back their strength to 50,000 before an Aug. 31 deadline to end combat operations.
Frequent attacks by insurgents linked to al Qaeda have tested the mettle of Iraqi security forces, raised tension and tried to undermine the Shi’ite-led authorities.
Overall, violence has fallen sharply since the height of sectarian carnage in 2006-07, but Iraq remains fragile, and the protracted political impasse has raised fears the country could fall back into bloodshed on a broader scale.
The alliance that won the most seats in the 325-seat parliament was former premier Iyad Allawi’s cross-sectarian Iraqiya alliance, heavily backed by minority Sunnis.
But Iraqiya, which has 91 seats in the new parliament, two more than State of Law, has been unable to win others to its side to form a working majority.
Maliki’s State of Law merged with the INA after the vote to form the National Alliance, with a total of 159 seats, but his partners refused to support his bid for a new term and nominated outgoing vice president Adel Abdul-Mahdi as a rival candidate.
State of Law and the INA will have to choose one of the two but participants at Tuesday’s meeting did not say how they would do that. "It has been agreed that consensus will be the basis for choosing the prime minister and a period of five days has been set to agree on a single nominee for the National Alliance," said Nassar Rubaie, a lawmaker from fiery anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s movement.
"Otherwise we will try other mechanisms," Rubaie said.
Rubaie said that once the National Alliance had selected a single candidate for prime minister, it would reach out to other alliances to form a government "of national unity".
A senior member of Iraqiya, Salman al-Jumaili, said his coalition would not join a sectarian government.
"Iraqiya … will not deal with a sectarian government that adopts sectarianism as a principle," said Jumaili.
