Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has urged Kurdish
authorities in northern Iraq
to hand over Iraq's
Sunni Vice-President, Tariq al-Hashemi.
An arrest warrant was issued for Mr Hashemi on Monday over terror charges.Tariq al-Hashemi is Iraq's most senior Sunni Arab politician. He says the allegations are "fabricated".
US Vice-President Joe Biden has urged Iraqi leaders to work together to avert renewed sectarian strife.
At a news conference broadcast live on Iraqi television, Mr Maliki, a Shia, said he would dismiss ministers belonging to the main Sunni political grouping, Iraqiyya, if they did not lift their boycott of parliament and cabinet.
Iraqiyya - which has been boycotting parliament in protest at Mr Maliki's alleged authoritarian manner - has suspended its ministers' participation in cabinet in response to the arrest warrant for Mr Hashemi.
The prime minister offered an invitation to all political factions to hold talks to try to resolve the crisis.
But if that did not work out he said that in the future Iraq could have a majority government which any person or bloc would be welcome to join, to "take the country forward in a positive direction".
Asked about Mr Hashemi's call for the Arab League to oversee any process against him, Mr Maliki said this was a criminal issue in Iraq. He saw no reason why the Arab League or the United Nations should intervene in an Iraqi criminal case, he said.
"We do not accept any interference in Iraqi justice," he said. "We gave Saddam a fair trial, and we will give Hashemi a fair trial too."
Mr Hashemi denies the claims that he paid his bodyguards to kill during Iraq's bloody insurgency.
On Monday evening Iraqi television showed purported confessions from his
bodyguards, but the vice-president says that they were false and
"politicised". He told reporters on Tuesday: "I swear to God that I never committed a sin when it comes to Iraqi blood."
He said he would be willing to face trial in Kurdistan.
Mr Maliki's news conference came after he had spoken on the phone to Mr Biden.
The US vice-president "stressed the urgent need for the prime minister and the leaders of the other major blocs to meet and work through their differences together," the White House said.
Mr Maliki leads a government of national unity in a fragile power-sharing deal that has lasted a year. But the current crisis means long-standing tensions between Sunni and Shia politicians are coming to a head, just days after the US military left the country.
Iraq has a majority Shia population, but the areas adjacent to the Syrian border are almost entirely Sunni-dominated.
The CA's correspondent Jim Muir, who is in Baghdad, says Sunni-majority provinces which had previously shown little interest in setting up Kurdistan-style autonomous areas have begun to embrace that idea.
This worries Nouri al-Maliki, who fears an alliance between Sunni areas of Iraq and a possible future Sunni-controlled Syria, should the government of Bashir al-Assad fall, he says.
