BAGHDAD (AP) – Iraq’s Shiite prime minister carried an appeal for unity to Saddam Hussein’s hometown Friday and told Sunni tribal chieftains that all Iraqis must join to crush Al Qaeda in Iraq and extremist Shiite militias “to save our coming generations.”

Nouri al-Maliki’s bold sojourn into Tikrit – a city once pampered by Saddam, its favorite son – underlined the prime minister’s determination to save his paralyzed government from collapse and prevent further disillusionment in Washington as voices grow for a troop withdrawal plan.

The sharp alteration in the government’s political course – a willingness to travel to the belly of the Sunni insurgency and talk with former enemies – suggested a new flexibility from the hard-line religious Shiites who hold considerable influence over Mr. al-Maliki’s views.

It also pointed to an apparent shift in military and political attention to northern Iraq as extremists seek new bases after being driven from Baghdad and strongholds in central Iraq by American-led offensives.

“There is more uniting us than dividing us,” Mr. al-Maliki told sheiks in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. “We do not want to allow Al Qaeda and the militias to exist for our coming generations. Fighting terrorism gives us a way to unite.”

Mr. al-Maliki’s turnaround has been startling, given accusations of a bias in favor of his Shiite sect.

He owed his premiership to the backing of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, nominal head of the Mahdi Army militia that has cleared entire mixed Baghdad neighborhoods of Sunni residents.

Throughout his first year in office, Mr. al-Maliki sought to protect the fighters from American raids on their Sadr City stronghold in eastern Baghdad. He ended these safeguards this spring after Mr. al-Sadr loyalists quit the Cabinet because Mr. al-Maliki refused to set a timetable for an American withdrawal.

The prime minister reportedly engaged in heated arguments with the top American commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, when the American military began signing on former Sunni insurgents in the fight against Al Qaeda in Anbar Province in Iraq’s west and Diyala province, north of the capital.

Now, Mr. al-Maliki is courting Sunni tribes in the north to join him.

And on Thursday, the prime minister signed a political manifesto, creating a new alliance with the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and the country’s two main Kurdish political parties.

The Supreme Council has its own militia, the Badr Brigade, which is fighting Mr. al-Maliki’s erstwhile Mahdi Army clients across Baghdad and in the Shiite heartland to the south.

The dramatic new overtures illuminate Mr. al-Maliki’s fear of a quick American troop withdrawal and his desperation to show progress on political reconciliation before General Petraeus and American Ambassador Ryan Crocker report to Congress next month.

American officials in Baghdad and Washington did not immediately signal support for the new political alliance, with a senior diplomat saying its lack of Sunni participation was a significant problem.

But President Talabani, one of the signers of the new coalition blueprint, appeared puzzled Friday by the lack of American enthusiasm.

“I don’t hear any American welcome for the new alliance,” he said at a news conference, arguing that the American-backed Iraqi constitution was partly to blame for the political paralysis. He apparently was referring to the complicated apportionment of key positions in government and parliament according to sectarian quotas.

Late Thursday, American troops clashed with suspected Sunni insurgents holed up in a mosque north of Baghdad and launched an air-to-ground Hellfire missile into the structure. One American soldier was killed in the fighting, the military said.

The soldier was killed and another wounded when troops stationed at a nearby were fired on from the Honest Mohammed Mosque in Tarmiyah. The soldiers were after six insurgents who were believed sheltered inside, according to the military.

The American forces surrounded the mosque district and sent the Sunni mosque’s groundskeeper into the building to persuade those inside to come out, the military said.

“About 20 left the mosque and stated there was no one left in the mosque. This was not true,” said Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly, a military spokesman for northern Iraq. The 20 were detained.

The missile was fired at the mosque after troops spotted gunmen on the roof, Colonel Donnelly said.

A police officer and a witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution, said American troops stationed near the mosque were shot at before sunset prayers and were starting their raid as worshippers left the building after the services. The missile left a hole in the minaret, they said. The military said the roof of the mosque sustained minor damage.

Because of religious sensitivities, American forces generally avoid entering mosques, instead providing a cordon while allied Iraqi security forces search the buildings. But the military claims Shiite and Sunni militants use that to advantage and take refuge in mosques and store weapons in them.
Tarmiyah, a predominantly Sunni town 30 miles north of Baghdad, was the site of a coordinated attack involving a suicide car bombing and gunfire against an American base in mid-February. Two soldiers were killed and 17 wounded in that ambush.

South of the capital, a Badr Brigade leader, Sheik Hamid al-Khudhari, was elected governor of Qadasiyah province, council member Ghanim Abid Dahash said. The previous governor was killed along with the provincial police chief in an ambush Aug. 11.

One other American soldier was killed and two wounded Friday in a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad. The deaths raised to at least 3,705 members of the American military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

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Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.