Iraq's parliament elected a senior Kurdish lawmaker president on Thursday, a significant step in a delayed process to create a government capable of uniting the country and countering insurgents threatening to march on Baghdad.
Visiting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Iraq's very survival as a nation was at risk and told politicians to drop sectarian differences and form an inclusive government to combat the nation's "existential threat".
Iraq's politicians have been in deadlock over forming a new government since an election in April. The next step, choosing a prime minister, may prove far more difficult.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ruled since the election in a caretaker capacity, defying demands from minority Sunnis and Kurds that he step aside for a less divisive figure. Even some fellow Shi'ites oppose his bid for a third term.
Critics say Maliki has stirred up sectarian tensions that have worsened since the Sunni insurgent group Islamic State swept through north and west Iraq last month, seizing large swathes of territory and declaring a "caliphate".
"Iraq is facing an existential threat but it can be overcome through the formation of a thoroughly inclusive government - a government that can address the concerns of all communities, including security, political, social and economic matters," Ban told a news conference with Maliki in Baghdad.
Hours after he spoke, two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding 33, police and medical sources said. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings in the capital.
The UN chief went from the capital to the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf to meet Iraq's top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has assumed his most active role in politics in a decade, demanding a new government be formed without delay.
The 83-year-old's renewed activism could hasten the end of Maliki's political ambitions.
"His Eminence underscored that the fight against the Islamic State and other armed groups should be exclusively conducted by the Iraqi security forces and only within the framework of the constitution," Ban told reporters after meeting Sistani.
The comments appeared aimed at discouraging the activities of Shi'ite militias that operate independently of the Iraqi army, some of which have abducted Sunnis they suspect of militancy, many of whom later turn up dead.
"We also discussed the ongoing political process of government formation," Ban said.
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