Nouri Maliki

The highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq on Friday disavowed criticism leveled by several senior officers at Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki for failing to rein in Shiite militias. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said in a sharply written statement that Maliki was doing a good job in bad circumstances. "These unattributed comments do not reflect the close partnership between the government of Iraq ... and Multi-National Force," he said.

RAMADI, Iraq - The call to prayer echoes across the quiet highway in western Iraq and a few hundred men gather along the roadside in the frigid night air. Each has a story to tell: a father whose son languishes in jail without trial; a veteran who cannot get a job; a student so terrified of the police that he avoids Baghdad. In the morning, they know the area will fill with thousands of people like them, with stories like their own. Under the flutter of tribal flags, they will shout boisterously the same words heard from protesters across the Arab world: Down with the regime.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki traveled to Anbar province, a visit that three years ago would have been considered a suicide mission into the cradle of the Sunni Arab resistance. Now the Shiite Muslim leader, famously mistrustful of the sect that dominated Iraq during Saddam Hussein's reign, was huddling with the head of the ruling Sunni coalition in Anbar, talking of the need to cut across sectarian lines in upcoming national elections.

With the last U.S. troops set to depart Iraq, President Obama on Monday welcomed a new phase of "equal partnership" with the Iraqi government, even as both sides admit uncertainty about how that will work. "We're here to mark the end of this war," Obama said, appearing alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki at the White House, and to "begin a new chapter in the history between our countries — a normal relationship between sovereign nations. " The Obama administration faces a host of challenges in postwar Iraq, where the role of the U.S. military in providing future training and assistance for security forces has yet to be defined, beyond both leaders saying it was vital to Iraq's long-term stability.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki unveiled today his coalition of religious, secular and tribal parties that will run in national elections this winter. With his announcement, the prime minister put himself in competition with fellow Shiite Muslims of his onetime political ally, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. The split between Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party and the SIIC was unthinkable four years ago when the country's Shiite religious majority stood united in a bid to solidify its control of Iraq after years of suffering under the Sunni-dominated regime of the late dictator Saddam Hussein.

The president of Iraq's Kurdish region charged Saturday that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was drifting toward authoritarian rule, in the latest sign of the dangerous rift that has emerged between the Iraqi leader and his partners in the country's ruling coalition. "One gets lost in absolute authority," said Massoud Barzani, the leader of the semi- autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north. "You become too authoritarian, you lose yourself."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said in a published report that he wished he could leave office before his four-year term was up and would not run again. "I didn't want to take this position," Maliki told the Wall Street Journal. "I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again." Maliki became prime minister in May, and his time in office has been defined by a surge in sectarian violence and a lack of progress.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was misunderstood when he said Americans could leave "any time they want," an aide said Sunday. Maliki told reporters Saturday that the Iraqi army and police were capable of maintaining security when U.S. troops leave. "We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want," Maliki said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki urged parliament Saturday to cancel or shorten its summer vacation to pass laws Washington considers crucial to Iraq's stability and the debate on how long U.S. forces should remain. Parliament was scheduled to adjourn for all of August.

Iraq's two Shiite Muslim political blocs, both with close ties to neighboring Iran , announced the formation late Tuesday of a coalition with a strong chance at forming a new government after inconclusive March 7 elections, state television reported. "After continuous talks…based on joint national principles…both coalitions have agreed to announce the formation of a single parliamentary bloc," said a statement read by Abdul-Razzaq Kadhimi, a member of former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's coalition and a onetime advisor to him. The new bloc combines the seats of the State of Law coalition, led by incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Maliki , and Jafari's Iraqi National Alliance, which includes the movement of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr . The announcement Tuesday left unresolved the question of who would lead the new coalition, though Maliki remains a strong contender.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki on Saturday accepted the resignation of Iraq's top corruption fighter, whom some observers labeled a casualty of political infighting in a country where graft is rampant. Raheem Uqaili, the chairman of the independent watchdog Integrity Commission, had drawn admirers and detractors alike for taking on cases targeting key figures in the Defense Ministry and other government agencies. A statement by Maliki's office said that "based on the wishes of the chairman of the Integrity Commission," the prime minister had accepted the request to step down.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki announced Saturday that Iraq plans to buy 36 U.S. fighter jets, signaling his intent to seek a long-term American military training presence in the country. But in an indication of the risks for the American military here, a U.S. watchdog group said that Iraq had become more hazardous. "Iraq remains an extraordinarily dangerous place to work," Stuart Bowen, chief of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said in a report. "It is less safe, in my judgment, than 12 months ago. " The report notes that 44 Iraqi government and security officials have been assassinated since April.

In an illustration of its growing muscle in Iraq as U.S. influence wanes, anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr's movement has won pardons for at least 50 prisoners jailed for crimes including murder, kidnapping and attacks on U.S. troops. The amnesties come at a time when U.S. forces remaining in Iraq have faced an increased number of attacks, many by Shiite Muslim militias associated with the Sadr movement. And they have angered some senior Iraqi officials, who charge that the law is being applied selectively and bent to fit a hidden political agenda.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Sunday that weapons supplied by Iran are behind a rash of attacks against American forces in Iraq, part of an escalating campaign of violence ahead of the planned U.S. troop withdrawal by the end of the year. "We're seeing more of those weapons going in from Iran, and they've really hurt us," said Panetta, who arrived in Baghdad on an unannounced visit after a two-day stop in Afghanistan. U.S. officials said 15 U.S. troops were killed in June, the most in any month in two years.

Six months after agreeing to form a national unity government, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his secular rival Iyad Allawi are again exchanging insults and cannot agree on such basic issues as who should run the nation's police and army. The rift, though unlikely to send Iraq back into sectarian violence, does have Iraqi and Western analysts concerned that the country will continue on a dysfunctional path as American troops move to complete their withdrawal by year's end, nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi government announced Monday that it would shut down a controversial jail that has been dogged by allegations of abuse. The jail in Baghdad's high-security Green Zone, called Camp Honor, fell under the nominal supervision of the Justice Ministry. But it was actually controlled by two elite security branches affiliated with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, the Baghdad Brigade and Counter-Terrorism Bureau. The detention center had its own investigators and barred families and lawyers from visiting.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki flew to London on Saturday for what he said was a routine medical checkup. Two aides denied wire reports that Maliki, who has faced increasing criticism for presiding over a paralyzed government, was suffering from exhaustion. They said the prime minister had wanted to get a checkup for some time and had decided to take advantage of a recent ebb in violence to make the trip.

Iran refused to allow the Iraqi prime minister to fly across its airspace as he was traveling to Tokyo, members of the delegation traveling with Nouri Maliki said early today. Two delegation members said Maliki's plane was diverted Saturday night to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he stayed in the airport for more than three hours while his government aircraft was refueled and a new flight plan was filed. The delegation members spoke about the incident by telephone from Dubai.

Clamor for political change across the Arab world has reached Iraq, where protests against poor government services have broken out in the capital and other cities. On Saturday, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki vowed not to run for a third term, a day after he announced that he would cut his pay in half. Other officials agreed to decrease their salaries in a bid to stave off the kind of unrest erupting elsewhere in the region. "We will also enact a law that guarantees equilibrium between the salaries of officials and ordinary Iraqis," said lawmaker Abbas Bayati.

An elite security force affiliated with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki that has been accused of abuse transferred about 280 detainees out of a notorious Baghdad jail last fall shortly before an international team was to inspect conditions there, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday. The New York-based advocacy group said the detainees who'd been hastily moved out of the Green Zone facility known as Camp Honor before the inspection were taken to Camp Justice, another jail in Baghdad's Kadhimiya neighborhood, and were still under the authority of special units.