BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 16 — Shiite leaders agreed today to allow Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's party to nominate the next prime minister, but some rivals are still insisting that Mr. Jaafari step down, Iraqi politicians said.
The move could bring the Shiite bloc closer to resolving a nearly two-month impasse over the candidate for prime minister and speed the formation of a new government.
As of this evening, Mr. Jaafari remained unwilling to abdicate, but officials in his party were discussing options, Shiite leaders said.
To allow more time for negotiations, the acting speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Adnan Pachachi, canceled a meeting of the 275-member assembly that was scheduled for Monday. He said in a telephone interview that he had acted "against my better judgment," but that a solution may be reached within a few days.
Mr. Pachachi had called the meeting last week to try to set a deadline for the Shiites to resolve the issue and present a nominee to Parliament.
In recent weeks, rival factions within the Shiite bloc, which holds 130 seats in Parliament, have been jockeying for the prime minister post. As the largest bloc in Parliament, they have the right to nominate the prime minister. Mr. Jaafari, considered by many to be an ineffectual leader, won the nomination in February by a single vote in a secret ballot among the Shiites. He had been backed by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
But in late February, the main Sunni Arab, Kurdish and secular blocs in Parliament said they would not accept Mr. Jaafari. Since a two-thirds vote of Parliament is essentially needed to install the executive branch, the process is at a standstill.
The Shiites have been trying to come up with another nominee for nearly two months. The candidate who lost to Mr. Jaafari in the secret ballot, Adel Abdul Mahdi, was considered a front-runner. But Mr. Sadr despises Mr. Abdul Mahdi's party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
It appeared today that Mr. Abdul Mahdi would take a vice president position rather than continue fighting for the nomination, said Khalid al-Attiyah, an independent member of the Shiite bloc.
"He's no longer running for the premiership," said Mr. Pachachi, the speaker.
Mr. Attiyah and Mr. Pachachi said the Shiite leaders agreed that Mr. Jaafari's political group, the Islamic Dawa Party, could nominate a candidate if it withdrew Mr. Jaafari, but it was unclear whether Dawa officials would be able to persuade Mr. Jaafari, the party's leader, to step down. Shiite politicians mention two party deputies inside Dawa — Jawad al-Maliki and Ali al-Adeeb — as possible replacements.
Some Shiite officials see those men as weak, like Mr. Jaafari. "The options are limited for the Dawa Party," Mr. Attiyah said.
The Shiites have come under increasing pressure from the clerical leadership in Najaf and the American government to resolve the dispute. American officials have made it clear to the Shiites they would prefer a replacement for Mr. Jaafari because of his close ties to Mr. Sadr, who oversees an unpredictable militia, and his relationship with Iran, where he lived for many years in exile.
Mr. Jaafari's party is the most respected Shiite political group in Iraq. It was heavily persecuted by Saddam Hussein and came to represent the Shiites' sense of victimhood under the old government. Shiite officials have considered nominating some politicians outside the Dawa Party. These include Hussein al-Shahristani, the former nuclear physicist; Kassim Daoud, national security adviser under the government that preceded Mr. Jaafari's; and Ali Allawi, the finance minister and a nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite politician and former Pentagon favorite.
Iraqi politicians are also fighting over the post of speaker of Parliament. The main Sunni Arab bloc is pushing the other blocs to support its leader, Tariq al-Hashemi, for the job. But some Shiites oppose Mr. Hashemi, saying he is too hard-line and sectarian in nature, said Sami al-Askari, a member of the Shiite bloc.
American and Iraqi officials say they hope the formation of a unified government will help stanch the sectarian bloodletting that has gripped Iraq. In the power vacuum, the rate of killings has soared, especially in the aftermath of the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine on Feb. 22. This afternoon, a suicide car bomb detonated outside the Al Shemal restaurant in the town of Mahmudiya, killing at least 10 and injuring at least 25, police officials said.
Guerrillas in Anbar Province, to the west, carried out assaults that killed four marines in two separate incidents on Saturday, the American military said today. At least 48 American troops have died so far this month, many in Anbar.
A British soldier was killed and three injured in a bomb explosion on Saturday, the British Defense Ministry said.
Early today, American-led forces raided a home in the town of Yusufiyah, the American military said in a written statement. During an ensuing battle, five insurgents and a woman were killed, and three women and a child were injured, the military said, while declining to give details on who was responsible. It said the raid was to search for a suspected Al Qaeda member, whom troops found.
In eastern Baghdad, a bomb planted in a minibus killed at least four people and wounded six others, an Interior Ministry official said. Gunmen killed a policeman in northern Baghdad and injured four others. Policemen found three bodies in the Tigris River, all shot in the head.
In Kirkuk, men dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms opened fire on civilians stopped by a road, killing two and injuring two others, said Col. Yadgar Abdullah of the Kirkuk police.
Dozens of policemen who were missing after an insurgent ambush on a police convoy north of Baghdad on Thursday have been accounted for, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the American military. He added that he did not know their condition. At least nine other policemen were killed and seven wounded in the nighttime attack.
The police chief of Najaf, where the policemen work, said Friday that the convoy had been forced to drive back to Najaf in the dark because the Americans had refused to let the policemen stay at an American base in Taji, where the policemen had been picking up new vehicles. Colonel Johnson said today that the Americans had actually tried to prevent the police from leaving the base for safety reasons, but the convoy had driven out a side gate.