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Crisis in Iraq takes new turn

Top Shia cleric calls for choosing a new PM before next parliament sitting

Agencies
The most influential Shia cleric in Iraq yesterday 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.
US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday said Syrian rebels can help push back Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jihadists in Iraq, as Washington unveiled plans to boost Syria's opposition with $500 million in arms and training.
The call came as he held talks with met with Ahmad Jarba, leader of the Syrian National Coalition after Washington unveiled plans to boost Syria's opposition with $500 million in arms and training.
He also met Saudi King Abdullah a day after hosting urgent talks in Paris with the Saudi, Jordanian and UAE foreign ministers on the widening crisis in Iraq and Syria.
1OSIL is now fighting in both Iraq and Syria, seeking to erase the frontiers and create a Sunni Islamic caliphate stretching from the Mediterranean Sea through Iraq.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who commands unswerving loyalty from many Shia 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 Shia volunteers have responded to an earlier call by Sistani for all Iraqis to rally behind the military to defeat the insurgents.
Under Iraq's governing system put in place after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the prime minister has
always been a Shi'ite, the largely ceremonial president a Kurd and the speaker of parliament a Sunni.
Divvying up the three posts before parliament meets would require leaders from each of Iraq's three main ethnic and sectarian groups to commit to the political process and resolve their most pressing problems, including Maliki's fate.
Maliki, whose Shia-led State of Law coalition won the most seats in the April election, had been positioning himself for a third term before the onslaught began. Some Shia leaders have suggested he may be replaced with a less polarising figure, although his closest allies say he aims to stay.
Sunnis accuse Maliki of excluding them from power and repressing their sect, driving armed tribal groups to back the insurgency led by ISIL. The president of Iraq's Kurdistan region has also said Maliki should go.
On the ground, Iraqi helicopters yesterday fired on a university campus in Tikrit, the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein and second major city to fall to insurgents more than a fortnight ago.
Government commandos launched an airborne assault on the campus on Thursday, a rare push back into rebel-held territory.
ISIL fighters' dramatic advance after capturing the main northern city Mosul on June 10 has transformed Iraq, threatening to destroy the country and reignite the wholesale sectarian slaughter that saw at least 100,000 Iraqis killed during US occupation from 2003-2011.
US President Barack Obama has ruled out sending ground forces back, but has sent up to 300 advisers, mostly special forces troops, to help the government fight the insurgents.
ISIL fighters consider all Shias heretics deserving death. They proudly boasted of executing scores of Shia government soldiers captured in Tikrit.
New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch yesterday said analysis of photographs and satellite imagery indicated ISIL had killed as many as 190 men in at least two locations over three days after they captured Tikrit. The death toll may be much higher but the difficulty of locating bodies and getting to the area had prevented a full investigation, it added.