BAGHDAD — Marathon talks to break an almost three-month deadlock on forming a new Iraqi government dragged on late Tuesday amid conflicting reports about whether Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari had a list of Cabinet members ready for approval.
A sense of urgency was apparent in the comments of Iraqi leaders as U.S. impatience with the impasse was believed to be rising. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. officials recently have urged members of the dominant Shiite Muslim and Kurdish coalitions to end the protracted talks and put forward a new government.
With violence in Iraq resurgent and much of the goodwill from the Jan. 30 election dissipated, lawmakers have been scrambling to put together a compromise package of ministerial appointments and break the embarrassing logjam. No group seemed especially happy with the Cabinet lineups that were leaking out.
"We are doing some last-minute patching up," said Ali Dabagh, a spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite-led coalition that won a slight majority of seats in the transitional National Assembly on Jan. 30. Jafari's Islamic Dawa Party is part of the coalition.
Some reports indicated that the prime minister's choice for more than 30 ministerial and other high positions would be made public as soon as today. Walid Shahib Hilli, a high-ranking aide in the Islamic Dawa Party, said the names of proposed principal ministers had been forwarded to the office of President Jalal Talabani, who along with his two vice presidents must approve the list.
Others were less optimistic and pointed to fractious talks that continued into the night Tuesday with no clear results.
"I think everything's still up in the air," one United Iraqi Alliance insider said. "They may not be back to square one, but they may be back to square two."
The new government must be named by May 7 or, by law, a new prime minister will be appointed.
The squabbling demonstrates how Iraq's ethnic, religious and political differences, kept in check for decades under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, have forcefully emerged.
Although the exact shape of the Cabinet remained unresolved, it seemed clear that lawmakers' stated desire for a government of national unity was unlikely to become a reality.
The party of outgoing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a U.S. favorite, appeared to be shut out of the Cabinet, according to his representatives and officials of the Shiite-led faction. Allawi's bloc has 40 seats, putting it a distant third behind a coalition representing ethnic Kurds.
