BAGHDAD — Key partners in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government may seek the ouster of the Shiite Muslim leader if he fails to move quickly on stalled benchmark reforms and on sharing in decision making.
Threats of a possible parliamentary vote of no confidence have come in recent weeks from the Kurdish Alliance and the Shiite party Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Maliki's last major defenders, which, along with the largest Sunni political party, have suggested Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, a Shiite, as a possible alternative.
The parties have told Maliki that he must build an effective ruling coalition.
"If he does not, he will hurt himself and he will hurt Iraq. Then the parties should seek other options," said Rosh Shawais, a senior Kurdish Alliance leader.
Iraqi leaders, worried that Baghdad could slip back into sectarian war, are demanding quick improvement in the government's performance in areas such as providing services and creating jobs for former Sunni insurgents.
"Whether it will come to a vote of no confidence or not, it remains to be seen, but the agreed policy, the agreed road map, is that sweeping fundamental reforms are urgently needed. Otherwise the consequences will be dire," said Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, with the Kurdish Alliance.
The warnings to Maliki have come in public statements, private communications and closed-door meetings since late December, when the Kurdish Alliance accused him in a letter of running a dysfunctional one-party state.
The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the main ally of Maliki's Shiite-run Islamic Dawa Party, promptly followed with a public rebuke during a Friday sermon. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni grouping in parliament, announced a political alliance with the Kurds.
Faced with a mini-revolt, Maliki held a meeting Jan. 14 with Iraq's three-man presidency council, with which he had feuded since late summer.
The council -- President Jalal Talabani of the Kurdish Alliance; and the two vice presidents, Tariq Hashimi, a Sunni with the Iraqi Islamic Party, and Abdul Mehdi, of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council -- presented Maliki a paper sketching their vision of how the government should be run. Maliki had spurned an earlier draft in August and had stopped meeting with the council.
The document calls on Maliki to set all national policies in consultation with the presidency council and to form an efficient technocrat government, slimmed down from its current size of nearly 40 ministries.
