The Triad of Evil reference was an obvious play on words U.S. President Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union address, when he labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea and "axis of evil."

Al-Sadr, whose militia launched two uprisings against U.S. troops in 2004, refused to name any group that he believed was behind the bombing of the Askariyah shrine in Samarra but hinted at members of Saddam Hussein's former regime or Sunni Muslim extremists.

"Those who carry arms could be takfiri extremists, Saddamists or others. But those who control arms are the Triad of Evil that are Israel, America and Britain," said the black-turbaned cleric during the one-hour interview.

The extremist takfiri ideology urges Sunni Muslims to kill anyone they consider an infidel, even fellow Muslims.

He said that the attacks on Sunnis that followed the Samarra explosion "were a natural reaction" by Shiites, angry over the attack on their shrine. He said he rejected any attacks on mosques of either Muslim sect, although violence after the Samarra bombing damaged many.

Al-Sadr, who was on a regional tour when the Feb. 22, bombing happened, cut short his visit and came back "in order for the country not to be pulled to street battles. I wanted to salvage the Iraqi people from these problems."

Speaking about the country's political crisis that erupted in recent days over the Shiite parliamentary bloc's nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to form a new government, al-Sadr said "I don't intervene in such small matters."

Al-Jaafari is strongly supported by al-Sadr, whose followers hold 30 seats in the 275-member parliament. The remainder of the Shiite blocs control 100 more.

"The candidate for prime minister must demand the withdrawal of the occupiers, or put a timetable for their pullout. I don't support any person who does not say that," al-Sadr declared. "What is important is that the occupiers leave because they are behind what is happening in Iraq."

"Putting a timetable on foreign troop withdrawal represents a victory for Iraqis not for terrorists," he said.

The cleric, speaking from the holy city of Najaf, said Saddam Hussein should not be tried but executed immediately. He criticized what he called American intervention in the trial and causing to take too much time.

Saddam was believed to have ordered the 1999 assassination of al-Sadr's father, Mohammed Sadiq, a top Shiite religious leader who spent years in jail under the former Iraqi leader.

"I call for the execution of Saddam," al-Sadr said. "He who did not let judicial authorities work under his rule should not be tried."

"He who shed the blood of Iraqis and Muslims easily, should have his blood shed easily," al-Sadr said.

At the same time, however, it conceded that the country's new institutions "remained under intense strain from the widespread violence" committed by insurgents and "terrorist elements", as well as "sectarian militias and security forces" acting "independently of government authority".

The latest edition of the Country Reports, which were first mandated by Congress in 1976, covers the human rights situations of nearly 200 countries in 2005 and stretches more than 3,000 pages in length.

The publication, which is based on reporting by other governments, international and local NGOs, journalists, academics and U.S. diplomats, is widely considered the world's single most comprehensive accounting of rights conditions in specific countries.

At the same time, the report is focused almost exclusively on political and civil rights and rights to personal integrity. It generally ignores those rights contained in the U.N. Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which has never been ratified by the United States.

As in the past, this year's edition does not address rights conditions in the United States or in U.S.-controlled facilities overseas, such as detention centres at the Guantanamo Bay naval base and in Afghanistan where Washington has been holding suspects in its "war on terror" in conditions that some human-rights monitors, including several U.N. Special Rapporteurs, have said amount to "torture".

That omission has been cited by critics as evidence of hypocrisy and double standards. "This report by the U.S. government provides a thorough review of today's human rights practices around the globe, except for one glaring omission -- its own record," said William Schulz, director of the U.S. section of Amnesty International.

"The United States government considers itself a moral leader on human rights issues, but its record of indefinite and arbitrary detentions, secret 'black sites' and outsourced torture in the 'war on terror' turns it from leader to human rights violator," said Schulz.

Amnesty cited cases where suspected terrorists held by the U.S. were transferred, or "rendered", to authorities in countries, including Egypt and Jordan, that are accused in the report of routinely using torture against prisoners held for security-related offences.

"This is a serious gap," said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First. Several years ago, she noted, the State Department instructed drafters of the Country Reports not to include actions taken by other governments at Washington's request.

"That instruction was later withdrawn, but the absence of reporting this year on abuses in which the U.S. is implicated raises questions about whether it continues to skew reporting," she told IPS.

She added that the report's failure to name a U.S.-created anti-terrorism unit, Detachment 88, in Indonesia in an otherwise extensive section on police abuses there raised similar questions about reporting on foreign forces closely tied to the U.S.

While the Country Reports avoid comparing the rights practices of different states, the introduction often singles out specific countries, normally those with which the U.S. has hostile or ambivalent relations, for special censure.

In last year's report, for example, the introduction focused on six nations -- North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Burma -- which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had labeled "outposts of tyranny". It also sharply criticised two key allies in the "war on terror" -- Saudi Arabia, which escaped any mention in this year's introduction, and Uzbekistan, with which relations have been severely strained over past year due to a massacre by government forces of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators last May.

This year's introduction noted that Tashkent's human rights record, "already poor, worsened considerably in 2005".

But Uzbekistan was not included in the worst or six categories of rights-abusing nations -- those "in which power is concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers (that) tend to be the world's most systematic human rights violators".

Leading that group, according to the introduction, were North Korea, "which remained one of the world's most isolated countries"; Burma, "where a junta rules by diktat"; and Iran, whose "government's already poor record on human rights and democracy worsened (in 2005)" in part due to the election of a "hard-line president (who) denied the Holocaust occurred and called for the elimination of Israel".

Also included in the "most systematic" list were Zimbabwe, whose "government maintained a steady assault on human dignity and basic freedoms"; Cuba, where "the regime continued to control all aspects of life"; China, where dissidents "faced harassment, detention, and imprisonment by government and security authorities"; and Belarus, whose president "continued to arrogate all power to himself and his dictatorial regime".

A second category of countries -- those whose systematic abuses "of their own people are likely to pose threats to neighbouring countries and the international community" -- included Burma, North Korea, Iran and Syria, according to the report. It argued that the alleged interference of the latter two in the affairs of their neighbours, including support for groups that Washington deems "terrorist", were related to their purported denial of fundamental rights to their own citizens.

A third group of countries -- those that commit the most serious abuses within the context of armed conflict -- included Sudan, which Washington has charged with committing genocide in Darfur; Nepal, whose "poor human rights record worsened (in 2005) as a result of violence by both the government and Maoist insurgents"; Cote D'Ivoire; and in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia's northern Caucasus region.

A fourth group -- those "where civil society and independent media are under siege" -- included Cambodia, China, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Belarus and Russia, according to the report.

The introduction also cited countries, besides Iraq and Afghanistan, for positive developments in the course of the year.

While civil war-related abuses and official impunity persisted in Colombia, the report noted that the government's counter-insurgency operations and ongoing demobilisation of paramilitary groups had led to a reduction in killings and kidnapping.

It also said the rights situation in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa had "improved markedly" in 2005, permitting the return of tens of thousands of displaced people, particularly Burundians, to their homes.

In the same vein, it welcomed advances in Ukraine after last year's "Orange Revolution"; Indonesia, where the peace accord between the government and the Free Aceh Movement ended decades of armed conflict; Lebanon, where Syrian forces were withdrawn in the face of domestic and international pressure; and Liberia, where Africa's first elected female head of state, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, marked "a milestone in the country's transition from civil war to democracy.

Half of the city's former population are displaced persons living in tents.

Thousands of Iraqis have been detained in prisons and hundreds have been brutally tortured. America's reputation in the Muslim world is ruined.

The Bush regime expected a short "cakewalk" war to be followed by the imposition of a puppet government and permanent US military bases.

Instead, US military forces are confronted with an insurgency that has denied control over Iraq to the US military. Chaos rules, and civil war may be coming on top of the insurgency.

On March 9, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the man who has been totally wrong about Iraq, told Congress that if the unprecedented violence in Iraq breaks out in civil war, the US will rely primarily on Iraq's security forces to put down civil war.

What Iraqi security forces? Iraq does not have a security force.
The Shia have a security force. The Sunnis have a security force, and the Kurds have a security force. The sectarian militias control the streets, towns and cities. If civil war breaks out, the "Iraqi security force" will dissolve into the sectarian militias, leaving the US military in the middle of the melee.

Is this what "support the troops" means?

President Bush's determination to remain in Iraq despite the obvious failure of the attempted occupation puts Bush at odds with the American public and with our troops. Polls show that a majority of Americans believe that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake and that our troops should be withdrawn. An even larger majority of the troops themselves believe they should be withdrawn.

Yet Bush, who is incapable of admitting a mistake, persists in a strategic blunder that is turning into catastrophe.

Bush's support has fallen to 34 percent.

The war's out of pocket cost to date is approximately $300 billion--every dollar borrowed from foreigners. Economic and budgetary experts have calculated that the ultimate cost of Bush's Iraq war in terms of long-term care for veterans, interest on borrowed money, and resources diverted from productive uses will be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.

What is being achieved for this enormous sacrifice?

No one knows.

Every reason we have been given for the Iraqi invasion has proved to be false. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
Reports from UN weapons inspectors, top level US intelligence officials, Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, and leaked top secret documents from the British Cabinet all make it unequivocally clear that the Bush regime first decided to invade Iraq and then looked around for a reason.

Saddam Hussein had no terrorist connection to Osama bin Laden and no role in the 9/11 attack. Hussein was a secular ruler totally at odds with bin Laden's Islamist aims. Every informed person in the world knew this.

When the original justifications for the US invasion collapsed, Bush said that the reason for the invasion was to rid Iraq of a dictator and to put a democracy in its place. Despite all the hoopla about democracy and elections, no Iraqi government has been able to form, and the country is on the brink of civil war. Some Middle East experts believe that violence will spread throughout the region.

The brutal truth is that America's responsibility is extreme. We have destroyed a country and created political chaos for no reason whatsoever.

Seldom in history has a government miscalculated as badly as Bush has in Iraq. More disturbingly, Bush shows no ability to recover from his mistake. All we get from our leader is pig-headed promises of victory that none of our military commanders believe.

Our entire government is lost in confusion. One day Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld tell us that we are having great success in training an Iraqi military and will be able to begin withdrawing our troops in a year. The next day they tell us that we will be fighting the war for decades.

Bush's invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Bush's attempt to cover up his mistake with patriotism will ultimately discredit patriotism.

America has to be big enough to admit a mistake and to bring it to an end.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Among the top earners is the construction firm Amec, which has made an estimated £500m from a series of contracts restoring electrical systems and maintaining power generation facilities during the past two years. Aegis, which provides private security has earned more than £246m from a three-year contract with the Pentagon to co-ordinate military and security companies in Iraq. Erinys, which specialises in the same area, has made more than £86m, a substantial portion from the protection of oilfields.

The evidence of massive investments and the promise of more multimillion-pound profits to come was discovered in a joint investigation by Corporate Watch, an independent watchdog, and The Independent.

The findings show how much is stake if Britain were to withdraw military protection from Iraq. British company involvement at the top of Iraq's new political and economic structures means Iraq will be forced to rely on British business for many years to come.

A total of 61 British companies are identified as benefiting from at least £1.1bn of contracts and investment in the new Iraq. But that figure is just the tip of the iceberg; Corporate Watch believes it could be as much as five times higher, because many companies prefer to keep their relationship secret.

The waters are further muddied by the Government's refusal to release the names of companies it has helped to win contracts in Iraq.

Many of the companies enjoy long-standing relationships with Labour and now have a financial stake in the reconstruction of Iraq in Britain's image. Of the total profits published in the report, the British taxpayer has had to meet a bill for £78m while the US taxpayer's contribution to UK corporate earnings in Iraq is nearly nine times that. Iraqis themselves have paid British company directors £150m.

The report acknowledges that British business still lags behind the huge profits paid to American companies. But, in two fields, Britain is playing a critical and leading role.

The threat from the Iraqi insurgency means British private security companies are in great demand. Corporate Watch estimates there are between 20,000 and 30,000 security personnel working in Iraq, half of whom are employed by companies run by retired senior British officers and at least two former defence ministers.

The biggest British player, Aegis - run by Tim Spicer, the former British army lieutenant colonel who founded the security company Sandline - has a workforce the size of a military division and may rank as the largest corporate military group ever assembled, according to the report. Other private security companies have sprung up overnight to protect British and American civilians.

Britain is also playing a leading role in advising on the creation of state institutions and the business of government. PA Consulting, which has also received a contract for advising on the Government's ID cards scheme, worth around £19m, is now a key adviser in Iraq.

Adam Smith International, a body closely linked to the right-wing think-tank used by Margaret Thatcher, has been heavily involved in the foundation of the Iraqi government and continues to influence its newly formed ministries. According to the Tory MP Quentin Davies, who visited Iraq, the advisers are "reordering Iraqi government operations at the most basic level, to help restructure some of the Iraqi ministries, in fact physically restructure them, even suggesting how the minister's office should be laid out".

Another favourite of the Thatcher governments, now involved in Iraq, is Tim Bell, who ran the Tories' election campaigns in 1979, 1983 and 1987. His PR firm Bell-Pottinger has been involved in advising on the 2004 elections and a strategic campaign to promote bigger concepts such as the return of sovereignty, reconstruction, support for the army and police, minority rights and public probity.

Loukas Christodoulou, of Corporate Watch, has been monitoring British business relations with Iraq since the invasion. He says in his conclusion to our joint report: "The presence of these consultants in Iraq is arguably a part of the UK government's policy to push British firms as lead providers of privatisation support. The Department for International Development has positioned itself as a champion of privatisation in developing countries. The central part UK firms are playing in reshaping Iraq's economy and society lays the ground for a shift towards a corporate-dominated economy. This will have repercussions lasting decades."

In five years, the £1.1bn of contracts identified in the report will be dwarfed by what Britain and the US hope to reap from investments. Highly lucrative oil contracts have yet to be handed out.

"We can't want peace in Iraq more than the Iraqis want it," Biden said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We can't want it more than they want it. And if they don't step up to the ball, we're going to be gone."

Biden said if knew what he knows now when Congress voted on the Iraq war resolution, he would have opposed it. "This has been a debacle," he said.

Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., said he agrees that it is vitally important for the Iraqis elected in February's parliamentary elections to form a government. But Allen, also a presidential hopeful, said he is unwilling to set a specific deadline.

Allen said the situation among the Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis is "going tough."

"Politically, action needs to be taken," Allen said. "They need to come together and then I think there will be greater confidence on part of the people of Iraq."

Presidential adviser Karl Rove said Saturday that the Bush administration will not pull American troops out of Iraq until victory is achieved, despite the growing number of Democrats urging a withdrawal.

Abandoning Iraq now would signal to U.S. allies that America can't be trusted, Rove said during a Republican fundraiser at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

"Tyrants in the Middle East would laugh at our failed resolve," he said. "To retreat before victory would be a reckless act."

Angry residents kicked the head of the suicide bomber, apparently an African, as it lay in the street of the al-Hay market in the east Baghdad neighborhood.

Smoke billowed into the air and fires continued to burn after the huge explosions, which demolished many shops.

Police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said police were trying to defuse a second explosives-laden car nearby. Four mortar rounds also reportedly slammed to earth nearby.

It was the second major attack targeting members of the Shiite majority in less than three weeks. On Feb. 22, the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the mostly Sunni city of Samarra, triggered a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunnis that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

On March 4, Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, predicted another such attack by terrorists trying to spark all-out sectarian conflict in the country.

''They'll find some other place that's undefended, they'll strike it and they'll hope for more sectarian violence,'' the general said after a two-day visit to Baghdad.

Across town, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad met with leaders of Iraq's main ethnic and religious blocs in a bid to broker the end of a stalemate over the formation of a unity government Washington hopes can stabilize the country so its troops can begin going home in the summer.

While moving the parliament's first session forward suggested some progress, none of those present indicated any breakthrough was made.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, stood by Shiite leader Adbul-Aziz al-Hakim and other Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular leaders to make the announcement about the parliament, telling reporters that meetings would continue daily until there is agreement on key government positions and other issues.

Khalilzad said a permanent government needed to be in place quickly to fill the ''vacuum in authority'' at a time of continuing effort by ''terrorists to provoke sectarian conflict.''

''To deal with the threat, (there is) the need on an urgent basis to form a government of national unity,'' Khalilzad said. He added that he would be available at any time to join the political negotiations.

Al-Hakim, head of the powerful Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, agreed forming a government was imperative.

''We have to get Iraq out of the situation it is in now,'' al-Hakim said.

Separately, the U.S. Embassy issued an order prohibiting government employees from using commercial airlines leaving the capital's international airport, citing a ''recent security incident.''

Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the largest Sunni bloc and Adnan Pachachi, a secular Sunni representing Ayad Allawi, a Shiite and former prime minister, also attended the meeting at Kurdish Democratic Party headquarters in the heavily fortified Green Zone. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, was not there but met earlier Sunday with Talabani.

The issue of forming a new government appeared to take on added urgency days before key military leaders were expected to make recommendations on the withdrawal of U.S. forces in meetings later this week with President Bush in Washington.

The convening of parliament will start a 60-day clock on electing a new president, approving a prime minister and signing off on his Cabinet. The decision came just two days after Talabani issued a decree calling parliament into session for the first time since Dec. 15 elections on March 19.

The U.S. ambassador, who has expressed increasing frustration over the political bickering in recent weeks, seemed particularly eager to publicize the meeting. His office took the unusual step of announcing it in advance and inviting reporters to a photo session and news conference afterward.

Kurdish parliamentarian Mahmoud Othman indicated the timing of the session may have been due to a threat from Massoud Barzani, the president of one of two Kurdish provinces, to leave the capital if no progress was made. Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, also was at Sunday's meeting.

In other violence Sunday, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol on a busy street in a mostly Sunni area of the capital killed at least six people and wounded 12, police said.

Drive-by shooters killed three occupants of a car in west Baghdad, including a member of Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, police said. And a rocket landed near a house, killing one occupant and injuring two others.

In Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen ambushed and killed a police major as he headed to work, police said.

A roadside bomb also hit a police convoy in Baquouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing one patrolman and wounding four others, police said

U.S. forces also clashed with gunmen Sunday afternoon in western Baghdad, Interior Ministry Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. An AP Television News cameraman reported that a U.S. helicopter landed nearby to remove casualties. The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

The ''warden's message'' distributed to the American community about the use of commercial airlines did not disclose the nature of the security incident that prompted the ban.

A spokesman for Royal Jordanian Airlines, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said two suspicious objects were found inside a cigarette package on the tarmac as passengers were going through a final security check before boarding a plane on Saturday. The flight left after a 3 -hour delay.

"The message that we received is that they are in favor of separating the Iranian people from the regime," said Esmail Amid-Hozour, an Iranian American businessman who serves on the Hoover board.

The newspaper also said Bush, according to aides, has personally been spending more time on the Iran issue and his advisers have invited 30 to 40 specialists for consultations in recent months.

Iran, which has fought to avoid being taken to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program, suspects Bush is using the nuclear issue as a pretext for promoting a change in the Islamic republic's government.

This week the U.N. Security Council is due to take up Iran's case after the International Atomic Energy Agency sent the council a report saying it could not verify that Iran's nuclear plans were purely peaceful.

MORE IRAN STAFF AT STATE

The Post also reported that the State Department created an Iran desk last week, with 10 staff working full-time on Iran, compared with only two last year. The department also is launching more training in the Farsi language and is planning an Iranian career track, which has been difficult without an embassy there.

Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns told the Post that the department will also add staff in Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates, as well as at other embassies in the vicinity of Iran, all assigned to watch Tehran. He called the new Dubai outpost the "21st century equivalent" of the Riga station in Latvia that monitored the Soviet Union in the 1930s when the United States had no embassy in Moscow.

The campaign also includes expanded Voice of America broadcasts into Iran to 4 hours a day from 1 hour currently.

Richard Haas, a former State Department policy planning director in Bush's first term, told the newspaper he believed the U.S. should try direct negotiations with Tehran, but added: "The upper hand is with those who are pushing regime change rather than those who are advocating more diplomacy."

Sunday's attacks came just minutes after leading politicians, in an unusual all-party meeting, made a show of determination to bridge the deep divides keeping them from forming a national-unity government.

Two car bombs - one detonated by a suicide driver - and four mortar rounds overwhelmed the announcement of an early first session of parliament after the meeting brokered by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

The political leaders told reporters they would open meetings Monday in an attempt to break the deadlock on forming a unity government.

The attacks in Sadr City, quickly sealed off by Mahdi Army militiamen of the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, caused pandemonium. Residents searched wildly for survivors and ambulances and trucks hauled away charred corpses.

Sirens wailed as ambulances raced to gather the wounded. Smoke billowed into the evening sky and angry young men kicked the decapitated head of the suicide attacker, who appeared to be an African, that lay in the street.

The nature of the attack, its use of a suicide bomber, pointed to the work of "al-Qaida in Iraq" which has said it hoped to start a Shiite-Sunni civil conflict.

Dozens of market stalls and vehicles were destroyed by the explosives, which ripped through the poor neighbourhood as residents bought provisions for the evening meal.

Police said they defused a third car bomb.

Iraqis feared such an attack was coming, especially after al-Sadr's fighters stormed out the slum to take revenge on Sunni Muslims and their mosques when a bombing destroyed a major Shiite shrine Feb. 22 in Samarra, some 100 kilometres north of Baghdad. Hundreds died in the subsequent days of sectarian violence. Dozens of mosques were destroyed or damaged.

"After Sadr City's reaction to the bombing of our holy shrine in Samarra, we were expecting bombing attacks," said Amer al-Husseini, a black-turbaned cleric and aide to al-Sadr.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Muslim group, condemned the bombings "by the enemies of our nation who don't want to see Iraqis united or living in a stable country."

In a statement, the group urged all Iraqis to co-operate "to put an end to the bloodshed that has targeted all Iraqis of all religions and sects and to speed the formation of a national-unity government."

The Sadr City bombers struck shortly after Khalilzad and leaders of Iraq's main ethnic and religious blocs announced they had agreed to move forward the first session of the new parliament to Thursday. In a bid to overcome differences on forming the next government, the leaders laid the groundwork for daily meetings.

Among the issues to be discussed in the upcoming all-party talks were the number of government positions the blocs will have, who will fill key posts and the government's program of action.

The first parliamentary session will take place three months after Dec. 15 elections and a month after the results were certified. That activates a 60-day deadline for the legislature to elect a new president, approve the nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari for a second term and sign off on his cabinet.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, stood at the side of Shiite leader Adbul-Aziz al-Hakim and other Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular leaders to make the announcement.

Khalilzad said a permanent government needed to quickly fill the "vacuum in authority" at a time of continuing effort by "terrorists to provoke sectarian conflict."

Al-Hakim, head of the powerful Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, agreed that forming a government was imperative.

"There was a determination from all the leaders to assume their responsibility to deal with this crisis. We have to get Iraq out of the situation it is in now," he said, standing outside Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party headquarters.

Iran, long a powerful player in Lebanon, has been able to increase its influence, partly through its ties to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. That has given Tehran a stronger hand to play in its confrontation with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program.

Should the nuclear showdown go badly for Iran, the government could rely on its surrogates in Lebanon as well as its influence in Iraq, or use oil for a weapon. In Lebanon, the Iranians could contribute to the kind of retribution they have promised as a payback, from a strike across the border into Israel, to a more forceful flexing that could paralyze the Lebanese government, political analysts and government officials said.

While Iran helped create, finance and train Hezbollah, it was Syria that settled scores and managed relations between Shiite factions and Palestinians throughout Lebanon. Syria was a filter between Tehran and Hezbollah, and now that Syria has been uprooted, Iran and Hezbollah can work much more closely.

Members of Hezbollah have become members of the government for the first time, magnifying the importance of the ties between Iran and the Lebanese Shiite movement.

That is the downside for the United States, and for Lebanon as well, officials here said. Unity remains elusive as Lebanon continues to be a playing field for foreign interests.

"There is without any doubt a growing Iranian influence not only in Lebanon but in the whole region," said Nassib Lahoud, a Maronite Christian who is a former ambassador to the United States and a legislator. "We are trying to build normal relations with everyone, and we refuse to turn Lebanon into a battlefield for regional and international powers."

Political leaders met here recently for what was billed as the start of a national dialogue, a chance to try to resolve long-simmering disputes. There was to be discussion about disarming militias like Hezbollah and figuring out what to do about President Émile Lahoud, a staunch ally of Syria, who has clung to his office even as his ability to govern has withered under pressure to resign.

But even before the meetings began, government officials conceded that Lebanon's ability to resolve some of its most vexing domestic conflicts would depend on decisions made in Tehran and Washington.

Charles Rizk, Lebanon's minister of justice, said that as Iran's and Hezbollah's influence grew in Lebanon, the country's hopes for unity hinged on whether Iran and the United States would at least agree to talk to each other. It is an idea, officials here acknowledge, that appears as remote as a Syria-Israel peace deal. But as a nation unusually susceptible to outside influences, officials said, that is Lebanon's reality.

"I hope that by America inaugurating a process of détente with Iran, this will reverberate into more consensus in Lebanon," Mr. Rizk said. "This is the only chance for us to solve our problems."

For years, Iran had been a kind of second lieutenant to Syria, important, influential and spiritually linked to the Hezbollah militia in a way that the Alawite leadership of Syria never could have been.

But with Syrian troops dug in, and Syrian intelligence agents running the show, Tehran's role was often more behind the scenes. In the 1980's, during the Lebanese civil war, Syria established its dominant position when it brokered a deal between the Shiite militias, Amal and Hezbollah, and settled the feuds in the Palestinian camps. After that, Iran found itself one step removed from the surrogates it helped create.

Then, suddenly, Syria found itself in retreat.

Iran saw an opportunity and began to press ahead with its established relationships in Lebanon, and with trying to build new ones. Lebanese officials and academics and religious leaders were increasingly feeling the generosity of the Iranian state, officials said, with invitations to conferences in Iran and offers of aid.

Lebanese officials say that Iran has been careful not to appear heavy-handed, so as not to alienate Sunni, Druse and Christian factions. After years under the fist of Damascus, many people here said that Iranian power was preferable because of geography - Tehran is far away - and because the Iranians appeared to be more intent on winning allegiances, not forcing them.

"Iran is omnipresent in Lebanon, not only with Hezbollah," said Ridwan al-Sayyid, an adviser to the prime minister and a professor of Islamic studies at Lebanese University. "They are strong, not like Syria, but they shape their presence in different ways. They are helping many, many organizations - Sunnis, Shias and Christians. They are benevolent."

This is not the first time that the United States has seen Iran benefit, however unintentionally, from events that were initially regarded as strengthening the Bush administration's hand. With each American military strike in the region, first against the Taliban in Afghanistan and then against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iran has found its influence in the region grow as its enemies have been defeated by American military might, political analysts said.

"Iran now has many more cards in confronting the United States than the United States has in confronting Iran," said Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

Now it appears that Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon increases the Iranian mullah's influence. A recent political alliance between Hezbollah and Gen. Michel Aoun, leader of the largest Christian bloc in Parliament, was viewed by one political analyst with close ties to the government as a "tactical victory" for Iran.

"It's because Syria has been deflated very much, Iran is rising as a force," Mr. Rizk said.

Ahmed Fatfat, the acting interior minister, said, "I believe that Iran's role in Lebanon has become stronger, and if you look at its relationship with Hezbollah it is stronger."

What this means, officials said, is that as long as the United States and Iran are at odds Lebanon will remain, at best, in limbo. Lebanon will be unable to resolve its own domestic problems while Iran continues to try to build up its strategic position.

"If there is an Iranian-American clash, it will be played out here," Mr. Fatfat said.