"The former stage required agreements, where we're the pretty face of a (sectarian) quota system," he said, but "in the current stage we are living ... this is a policy which is gone."

One leading expert on Iraqi politics said Maliki was emphasizing his own freedom of action in the wake of the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Reidar Visser, a Norwegian scholar who runs the website www.historiae.org, said Maliki seemed willing to move now toward a "sectarian alliance of mostly Shiites."

In his prepared remarks, Maliki repeatedly referred to the Iraqi constitution as being the only guide to the organization of government, and at one point he called it the country's "supreme holy document." In so doing, he effectively was repudiating the extra-constitutional deal, supported by the United States at the time, which made him prime minister, even though Allawi won more seats in parliament, Visser said.

"Maliki ... is saying that much of the so-called Erbil agreement about power-sharing is not really in the constitution," Visser said. "He is glad the others gave him the premiership in return for certain promises about power-sharing, and having been granted the premiership, he now intends to ignore what was stipulated about power-sharing at Erbil. Instead he will follow the constitution only."

Visser said he doubted that Maliki would resign as prime minister, which would put the initiative in the hands of President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, but instead would let the current power-sharing arrangement evolve into a majority government.

"I think how this may work in practice is that he will marginalize Iraqiya and appoint acting ministers if they fail to show up at cabinet meetings," Visser said. "Parliament may become irrelevant or, if Iraqiya withdraws, dominated entirely by the Shiite alliance. Maliki also will rely on a judiciary that is increasingly susceptible to his demands."

Maliki also disclosed that he had reached an agreement with the United Nations under which he'd allow Iranian dissidents who've been living in Iraq since the 1980s to stay beyond his own deadline of Dec. 31. He said the condition was that they move to the former Camp Liberty, which had been a U.S. base at Baghdad's international airport, and that the U.N. move about 800 out of Iraq before the end of the year. U.N. officials said the Mujahidin E Khalq, or MEK, had not yet agreed, and it wasn't clear what will happen if no deal is reached.

(Lesley Clark in Washington and special correspondent Sahar Issa in Baghdad contributed.)

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