Iraq's leader can't get out of 1st gear

A hush fell over the room as Hashimi demanded to know whether the prime minister had been accusing his political bloc of being infiltrated by terrorists.

"Are you talking about us? If you are

Maliki sat in silence.

Iraq's government is teetering on the edge. Maliki's Cabinet is filled with officials who are deeply estranged from one another and more loyal to their parties than to the government as a whole. Some are jostling to unseat the prime minister. Few, if any, have accepted the basic premise of a government whose power is shared among each of Iraq's warring sects and ethnic groups.

Maliki is the man U.S. officials are counting on to bring Iraq's civil war under control, yet he seems unable to break the government's deadlock.

Even Maliki's top political advisor, Sadiq Rikabi, says he doubts the prime minister will be able to win passage of key legislation ardently sought by U.S. officials, including a law governing the oil industry and one that would allow more Sunni Arabs to gain government jobs.

"We hope to achieve some of them, but solving the Iraqi problems and resolving the different challenges in the [next] three months would need a miracle," Rikabi said.

Interviews with a broad range of Iraqi and Western officials paint a portrait of Maliki as an increasingly isolated and ineffectual figure, lacking in confidence and unable to trust people.

Iraq's intractable problems would challenge even the most skilled of politicians. But skilled politicians are in short supply here. Most of Iraq's current leaders grew to adulthood as members of underground militias, skilled in the arts of conspiracy, not compromise. And many of those leaders appear to believe that their side can still win a decisive military victory in the country's civil war.

Maliki, 57, shares that background and world view. A longtime Shiite Muslim leader, he fled to Iran soon after Saddam Hussein took power and spent the subsequent years in exile in Iran and Syria, plotting Hussein's overthrow. He was never expected to become prime minister and emerged as a compromise candidate after his Islamic Dawa Party's first two choices were rejected by the Americans and the Kurds.