Iraq PM seeks assistance of Shiite clerics al-Sadr, Sistani

BAGHDAD, Oct. 18 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki flew to the holy city of Najaf on Wednesday to plead for help from Iraq’s two most influential and enigmatic Shiite clerics, in a sign of the crisis surrounding the Iraqi government as it faces mounting American pressure to quell sectarian violence by reining in Shiite militias.

Mr. Maliki returned to Baghdad without any clear breakthrough in his meetings with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, and Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American leader of the Mahdi Army militia, which has been accused of a wave of sectarian attacks on Iraq’s Sunni minority.

Ayatollah Sistani, a peacemaker in previous confrontations between the American forces and Mr. Sadr, is widely viewed in Iraq as the only Shiite leader with the potential authority to subdue the Shiite militias. As a leader of one of the Shiite religious blocs that lead the government, Mr. Maliki is regarded as a protégé of Ayatollah Sistani’s, but he is also politically indebted to Mr. Sadr, whose party holds a crucial bloc of seats in Iraq’s Parliament.

Indeed, Mr. Maliki intervened Wednesday to win the rapid release of one of Mr. Sadr’s prominent loyalists, who was seized in an American-led raid on Tuesday and suspected of complicity in death squads. The release provoked a new wave of exasperation among American officials and military commanders, who have made little secret of their growing doubts about Mr. Maliki’s political will or ability to stop the killings.

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