Blame flies over Iraqi leadership stalemate

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi politicians in the past few days have begun using uncommonly bitter language to blame one another for the impasse over a new government, a development that suggests that stalemated talks are nowhere near success.

All sides say no one is showing a sense of urgency to resolve the situation, more than four months after Iraqi voters went to the polls on Dec. 15. Some suggest it may be weeks, if not months, before a government is in place.

"I don't think anybody is in a hurry," said Mahmoud Othman, a top Kurdish leader. "They are completely out of touch with the voters."

One reason for that, he said, is that most Iraqi leaders live in the U.S.-protected Green Zone and aren't faced with the lack of security that most Iraqis feel every day.

Iraq's Sunni minority and Shiite majority have been engaged in a struggle for power and influence since the U.S.-led invasion. Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish political leaders have been deadlocked in government-formation talks for months.

Sunnis say Shiites are stalling the process by not nominating a new prime minister candidate to replace Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, seen as too partisan by some. Some Shiites say Sunni politicians want more power in the new government than they won via the ballot box.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Saleh al Mutlaq, a top Sunni politician, said he was embarrassed by the delay. He said that there's a "race for posts while Iraqis are being killed."

Public anger at the delay is a regular feature of television and radio shows. Most callers say that the lack of a new government is insulting and that the democratic process is a sham.

Non-Shiite politicians say there's no incentive for the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance to resolve the debate. In addition to the fight over the prime minister's job, there are disagreements over who should serve as president, the two vice presidents and speaker of the parliament. Negotiators meet daily. But the meetings have so far ended without a resolution.

Clashes continued for a second day in a volatile Sunni Arab neighborhood of northern Baghdad, leaving at least five Iraqis dead and 20 wounded Tuesday in fighting between gunmen and Iraqi security forces.

Witnesses described sectarian gunbattles between forces of the Shiite-led security forces and Sunni Arab residents.

But Iraqi officials maintained that outside insurgents had infiltrated the city's Adhamiya quarter and provoked clashes with police and the army, which had already left at least three people dead on Monday.

Elsewhere in the capital Tuesday, a bomb exploded at a Baghdad cafe frequented by policemen, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 20, police said. Authorities discovered 15 dead men with their hands bound behind their backs and with single shots to the back of their heads in various parts of Baghdad.

In the southern city of Basra, a policeman was gunned down in a drive-by shooting.

Lawlessness has increased over the past two days on the streets of Kirkuk, the oil-rich northern city contested by ethnic Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.

On Tuesday, suspected insurgents shot to death an Iraqi soldier, fired mortar rounds at an Iraqi army base and blew up a passing police vehicle convoy, injuring two officers, said Capt. Abbas Khaled of the Kirkuk police. A day earlier, gunmen ambushed cars on the road outside Kirkuk, killing one civilian and injuring three.

Contractor pleads

guilty to bribery

WASHINGTON — A contractor in Iraq has pleaded guilty to providing money, sex and designer watches to U.S. officials in exchange for more than $8 million in reconstruction contracts, federal officials announced Tuesday.

Philip H. Bloom faces as many as 40 years in prison after admitting to paying more than $2 million in bribes to U.S. officials with the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled Iraq after the American invasion in 2003.

Bloom's guilty plea on bribery and money-laundering charges is the latest development in a widening corruption scandal centered on a network of U.S. civilians and military officials who worked out of a coalition outpost in the south-central Iraqi town of Hillah.

Additional information from The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times