The most influential Shi’ite cleric in Iraq called on the country’s leaders to choose a prime minister before parliament sits next week to begin forming a government, to blunt a Sunni insurgency that threatens to dismember the country.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who commands unswerving loyalty from many Shi’ites in Iraq and beyond, said political blocs should agree on the next premier, parliament speaker and president before the newly elected legislature meets on Tuesday.
Sistani’s extraordinary intervention into politics forces the pace of a process that took nearly 10 months after Iraq’s last election in 2010, and means the fate of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki - serving as caretaker after an election in April and battling to keep his job - could be decided within days.
The United States and other countries are pushing for a new, inclusive government to be formed as quickly as possible to counter the insurgency led by an offshoot of al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Over the past fortnight, militants have overrun most majority Sunni areas in north and western Iraq with little resistance, advancing to within an hour’s drive of Baghdad.
Iraq’s million-strong army, trained and equipped by the United States, largely evaporated in the north after the militants launched their assault with the capture of the north’s biggest city Mosul on June 10.
Thousands of Shi’ite volunteers have responded to an earlier call by Sistani for all Iraqis to rally behind the military to defeat the insurgents.
