Analysis: Analysis: Maliki Snub a Sign of Tension

Prime Minister al-Maliki answers a question in a joint news conference with President Bush following their meeting in Amman, Jordan

CAIRO, Egypt -- Iraq's Shiite leader was firm, his aides say _ he would not talk to President Bush with Jordan's Sunni king listening.

That startling show of mistrust in a neighbor led to a cancellation of a meeting between the three leaders Wednesday night and sent a cold shiver across the Middle East on Thursday, raising fears of a region-wide Sunni-Shiite split that the United States may be powerless to control and Iran could benefit from.

Few things would harm the region more than for Iraq's hostilities to infect other Arab countries, some of them U.S. allies already clutching at stability amid new signs of extremism.

It would also be detrimental to Iraq if its neighbors begin taking sides in its internal fight, intensifying the march toward all-out civil war.

Yet both appear to be happening, as moderate Sunni governments like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, long known as the region's powers, exhibit rising distrust toward newly influential Shiites in the region _ and vice versa.

Jordanian officials played down Wednesday's flap, saying there had been no plans for a formal three-way meeting among Bush, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Jordan's King Abdullah II, only a brief social call. The U.S. asserted the same.

Al-Maliki said he meant no snub to either Abdullah or Bush and noted he already had met separately with the king. "That was not part of our agenda, a trilateral meeting," he said.

But two senior officials traveling with al-Maliki, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the information's sensitivity, said the prime minister had not wanted to travel to Jordan in the first place and decided, once in Amman, that he did not want "a third party" in talks with Bush.

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