Speaking through an aide who delivered a sermon after Friday prayers in the holy city of Kerbala, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said leaders should show flexibility so that political deadlocks could be broken and Iraq could confront an insurgency.
Maliki has come under mounting pressure since Sunni militants led by the hardline Islamic State swept across northern Iraq last month and seized vast swathes of territory, posing the biggest challenge to Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011.
Critics say Maliki is a divisive figure whose alienation of Sunnis has fuelled sectarian hatred and played into the hands of the insurgents, who have reached to within 70 km (45 miles) of the capital Baghdad.
Sistani said it is time for politicians to think of Iraq’s interests, not their own.
“The sensitivity of this phase necessitates that all the parties concerned should have a spirit of national responsibility that requires the practice of the principle of sacrifice and self-denial and not to cling to positions and posts.”
Maliki, a Shi’ite, has ruled since an election in April in a caretaker capacity, dismissing demands from the Sunnis and Kurds that he step aside for a less polarising figure. Even some Shi’ites oppose his bid for a third term.
Despite pressure from the United States, the United Nations, Iran and Iraq’s own Shi’ite clergy, politicians have been unable to quickly come up with an inclusive government to hold the fragmenting country together.
Iraq’s parliament took a step toward forming a new government on Thursday, when lawmakers elected senior Kurdish lawmaker Fouad Masoum as president. [ID:nL6N0PZ244]
The next step, choosing a prime minister, may prove far more difficult as Maliki has shown no sign he will give up his post.
Sistani’s call for flexibility could hasten his departure. He is seen as a voice of reason in the deeply divided country, and has almost mythological stature to millions of followers, members of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority.
The 83-year-old cleric who hardly ever appears in public last month seized his most active role in politics in decades by calling on Iraqis to take up arms against the Sunni insurgency.
The insurgents, who hold territory in Iraq and Syria and have declared a ‘caliphate’, aim to redraw the map of the Middle East and have put Iraq’s survival as a unified state in jeopardy. The army virtually collapsed in the face of their lightning advance.
Shi’ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have become a critical line of defence against Islamic State as the militants set their sights on the capital.
U.S. military and Iraqi security officials estimate the Islamic State has at least 3,000 fighters in Iraq, rising towards 20,000 when new recruits since last month’s advance are included.- Reuters
