Maliki's public feud with Sunni official highlights Iraq's divisions

BAGHDAD — The sniping is incessant, the skirmishes bruising. For months, the verbal warfare between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and his Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, has been escalating.

Now Iraqi politicians and American diplomats and analysts fear that the very public feuding between two of Iraq's most influential leaders will doom even the minimal hopes that exist for progress on a host of key benchmarks — such as holding provincial elections and equitably sharing oil revenues.

"This is not merely about personalities quarreling over something trivial," said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Middle East for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "It's about control of the state. ... It's about basic interests, factional and sectarian, and survival."

Despite a dramatic decline in violence, there's been no sign of reconciliation among Iraq's leaders and no progress on many key issues, according to U.S. and Iraqi assessments. Without progress, the open warfare between Iraq's many factions that seems to have eased in recent weeks, is likely to resurge, once the United States begins reducing the number troops in Iraq.

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