IRAQ - Mar 7 - Jaafari Vows He Will Not Be Dissuaded In Candidacy.

Shiite PM Jaafari declares he will not be pressured into abandoning his bid for a second term, as the Kurdish Pres bows to Shiite pressure to delay calling Parliament into session until a deadlock is resolved over who should lead a unity government. On the diplomatic front, Jordan's King Abdullah said that he is seeking to hold a conference in Amman between Iraq's religious leaders in a bid to bridge deepening divisions. PM Ibrahim Al Jaafari suggested that the current standoff over his nomination had grown out of a personal dispute with Pres Jalal Talabani, who is at the center of a campaign by Kurdish, Sunni and some secular Shiite politicians to deny him a second term. "No one can make bargains with me by enlarging personal disagreements", Al Jaafari told reporters at his office. "Dr. Jaafari will not be subdued by blackmail. Dr. Jaafari is not violating the constitution. I am not moody, and I am not personalizing the constitution". In one of his most dismal assessments of the situation, US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Washington had "opened Pandora's box" by invading Iraq in 2003 and the "potential is there" for the conflict to descend into full-blown civil war. Def Sec Donald Rumsfeld said that there has always been a risk Iraq could slip into a civil war but the news media has exaggerated the severity of the current situation. "I do not believe they're in a civil war today", Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing. "There's always been a potential for a civil war. That country was held together through a repressive regime that put hundreds of thousands of human beings into mass graves". Rumsfeld also made new accusations that Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been infiltrating Iraq. "They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq, and we know it, and it is something that they will look back on as having been an error in judgment", he said. Asked to elaborate, Rumsfeld said Iran was putting "Quds force-type people", or Revolutionary Guard forces, into the country. In a bid to force a showdown in the dispute, Talabani said he would order Parliament into session Mar 12 for the first time since the December elections and the Feb 12 ratification of the results, in line with constitutional directives. Such a meeting would have started a 60-day countdown for lawmakers to elect a President, approve Jaafari's nomination as PM and sign off on his Cabinet. Talabani was mistakenly counting on the signature of Vice Pres Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a Shiite who lost his own bid for the PM's nomination by one vote to Jaafari. But Abdel-Mehdi declined to sign, for now. A political committee representing the seven Shiite parties that make up the UIA, the largest group in Parliament, sent Talabani a letter asking him to delay the first session until there is agreement on who should occupy top government positions, said Khaled Al Attiyya, an independent member of the Alliance. Parliament speaker Hajim Al Hassani told reporters a new date would be set Mar 9. "We hope that during the coming days, we will be able to reach a basic level of agreement on when to call the Council of Representatives to convene", he said. In Amman, King Abdullah, meeting Iraqi FM Hoshyar Zebari, urged Iraqi parties to quickly move to form a national government representing all the segments of the Iraqi people, the state news agency Petra said. Abdullah said he was working with the Arab League to put together a reconciliation conference between Iraq's religious leaders aimed at "finding ways to ensure national unity". Zebari welcomed the idea, Petra reported. Iraq's political infighting has left a dangerous leadership vacuum in Iraq, underlined by the continuing violence and lawlessness.