BAGHDAD - The eagerly awaited new Iraqi government was on hold again Monday, 12 weeks after landmark elections, amid fears that, with violence unchecked and sectarian tension on the rise, delay could play into the hands of insurgents.
Rebels struck at Iraq's vital oil industry, setting fire to pipelines in the north, after a new wave of bombings targeting the Shiite majority community in Baghdad.
Signalling trouble in their ranks, Iraqi leaders acknowledged they had failed to agree on a coalition government, nearly three months after parliamentary elections saw the Shiites and the Kurds emerge as much the largest blocs.
"In principle we were to have announced the new government today, but last-minute details are preventing this," said Jawad Maliki, deputy leader of the Dawa party of prime minister-designate Ibrahim Jaafari.
"Maybe the government will be announced tomorrow," he told a news briefing.
US officials have suggested that further delay could undermine the Iraqi authorities' credibility.
And the European Union, which wents to co-host an Iraq conference with the United States in late June, urged Iraqi leaders to speed up efforts to form a government so that it could firm up its plans.
"I urge all sides to really form this government, because only then can we really act," said EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
Ahmed Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite who won election as part of the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, said the delay in forming a government was helping the insurgents.
"We need a government immediately, and the delay in forming the cabinet has encouraged the terrorists, and I believe that we must move forward very, very quickly," Chalabi told CNN.
Jaafari has been seeking to form a cabinet based on a broad coalition of Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs, despite the fact that the Sunnis, who dominated Saddam Hussein's regime and all previous Iraqi governments, largely boycotted the polls and are under-represented in parliament.
He appears to have abandoned efforts to convince supporters of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite backed by Washington, to join his coalition, aides said.
"I don't think they are likely to be included," Maliki told AFP.
"It doesn't look like" they will be taking part, said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who is expected to remain at his post.
"We all tried to encourage them to participate" but in vain, he added.
Allawi supporters said Friday they would join a new government only if they were given five cabinet posts, including a deputy premiership.
"These are our demands and, if they are not satisfied, we cannot participate in the government," said the head of Allawi's negotiating team, Rasem Awady.
Allawi's Iraqiya list took just 40 of the 275 seats in parliament in Janaury's elections. The United Iraqi Alliance took 146 seats, while the main Kurdish bloc took 77.
Jaafari has also run into trouble with the National Front, an umbrella group of more than 30 Sunni factions, which had demanded at least eight cabinet posts, including a deputy premiership, as its price for joining the government, even though Sunni-led factions have just 17 MPs.
Meanwhile, as Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz announced in Islamabad that an embassy employee kidnapped in Baghdad had been released Sunday, police here said a Jordanian businessman had been abducted by gunmen.
Malik Mohammad Javed, 45, who disappeared on April 9 when he went for evening prayers at a Baghdad mosque, was released safely Sunday and would soon return home, the Pakistani foreign ministry said.
The brother of the kidnapped Jordanian -- identified as Samir Rajab al-Suqi, manager of the Amman branch of the Kuwaiti Midas furniture company -- appealed for his release.
Fears of sectarian violence were rekindled after at least 16 people died and 50 were wounded in two explosions late Sunday outside an ice cream parlour close to the Shiite al-Beit mosque in Baghdad's northern Shula district, police said.
The attacks followed a suicide bombing at another Shiite mosque in the capital during weekly prayers on Friday, which left nine dead and 26 injured.
No one claimed responsibility for the attacks but Shiites are pointing the finger at Sunni insurgents, accusing them of trying to foment a civil war.
Rebels also blew up pipelines linking several wells northwest of the northern oil centre of Kirkuk overnight, setting off a large blaze, officials said.
Insurgents regularly target the oil industry, which is the country's only significant foreign currency earner.

04/25/2005 11:54 GMT