Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, Wednesday promised action to release hundreds of Sunni Muslims detained for suspected security offences, in a bid to allay Sunnis holding mass protests for more than two weeks.
But the premier, facing one of his biggest crises since taking office in 2006, criticized the opposition for demanding the repeal of an anti-terrorism law, which they say has unfairly targeted the once-dominant Sunni minority.
"This is a matter for parliament, not for the government, to handle," al-Maliki said in the capital, Baghdad.
Sunni-dominated areas of central and northern Iraq have seen a wave of protests after bodyguards of the Sunni finance minister, Rafie al-Issawi, were arrested on terrorism-related charges in mid-December.
Al-Maliki denied he had ordered the detentions, saying the bodyguards were arrested following an independent judicial inquiry based on the anti-terrorism law.
Pointing to the release of 11,000 detainees last year, he said that 11 new judicial commissions had been formed to consider the cases of the remaining detainees and release those "without innocent blood on their hands."
The protests against al-Maliki received cautious support Tuesday from the influential Shiite Islamist leader, Moqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Maliki's relations with Iraq's Sunnis soured in 2011 when an arrest warrant was issued against the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, on terrorism charges.
Al-Hashemi denied the accusations and fled to Turkey. An Iraqi court last year sentenced him, in absentia, to death.