Under a constitutional timetable, Maliki's 30 days to form a government end on Monday. Despite confident assertions last month that he would need only a week or two, wrangling among and within Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs came close to thwarting him, as it did his ally and predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Still, the key security posts at interior and defense have eluded his dealmaking skills, even though all parties are agreed that the jobs should go to a Shi'ite and Sunni respectively.

If no 11th-hour solution is found before the 275 members of the Council of Representatives vote in the fortified Green Zone on Saturday, Maliki will occupy the interior ministry for a week and Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi will run defense.

Complaints among Saddam's once dominant Sunni minority that the Shi'ite majority brought to power by the U.S. invasion was abusing its control of the interior ministry by running death squads within the police focused attention on the interior post.

An upsurge in sectarian killings, some carried out by men in uniform, after February's bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine has prompted growing alarm about the threat of civil war.

Hundreds of people are being killed every month in Baghdad alone and tens of thousands have fled their homes. Some fear the communal violence may have gone too far to reverse.

Maliki, a tough-talking defender of Shi'ite interests since his return from exile in 2003, has won praise from Sunnis for his willingness to seek consensus. But many question whether a government cobbled together according to religious and ethnic labeling can overcome centrifugal forces tearing Iraq apart.

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