IRAQ’S caretaker prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimis called a meeting of different parties today in a bid to resolve a political crisis — but powerful cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters refused to attend.

Iraq has been deadlocked for 10 months since an election that gave Mr Sadr’s bloc the most seats but failed to produce a majority government. 

Iran-backed Shi’ite groups, parties representing the Sunni minority and Kurdish organisations met for talks but without the Sadrists, who have resigned en masse from parliament, stormed it last month and demand early elections, no breakthrough was likely.

Mr Sadr said last week he was giving the judiciary a week to dissolve parliament, something judges said they have no authority to do.

The Iraqi Communist Party has backed the call for early elections, saying the jockeying is over different groups’ “share of wealth and influence” and not on real state-building. Any government based on sharing out power between “ethno-sectarian groups” would offer nothing new, it said.