Iraq's relations with Syria nosedived several weeks ago when Baghdad accused Damascus of harboring Sunni hardliners who had been members of Saddam's Baath Party.

Until then, relations between the two appeared to be improving after years of strain, with Washington accusing Syria of helping the insurgency driven largely by minority Sunnis who lost power when Saddam's regime was toppled in April 2003.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, accused Syrian-based Baathists of masterminding similar bombings on government ministries in Baghdad on Aug. 19, killing 100 people.

Sunday's confessions on Iraq's state television network marked the first time that Iraqi authorities had claimed the October bombings also involved Syria, Iran's sole Arab ally.

On both occasions Maliki's intention appeared to be to stir hostility between the majority Shiites and the Sunni minority ahead of the 2010 elections while the departing Americans have sought to reconcile the longtime adversaries.

Maliki is running for re-election after breaking with his former Shiite coalition partners and has been amassing personal control of the often-competing military, security and intelligence services established by the Americans since 2003.

His critics, and many U.S. officials, see this as a bid to establish himself in the mold of the classic Arab strongman.

The Americans are particularly alarmed at Maliki's takeover of the National Intelligence Service, set up by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in 2004.

It has long been a target for Maliki, in part because it employed many veterans of Saddam's security apparatus because they were the only professionals available.

But they included many Baathists who had operated against Iran, Iraq's traditional enemy and its foe in the 1980-88 war launched by Saddam, and its extensive security network inside Iraq.

For the Americans, these operatives were invaluable despite their Baathist background. But large numbers of them are reported to have been thrown out, or even killed, since Maliki's takeover.

Several prominent Sunnis, particularly former insurgents who had been induced to join the Americans, have been murdered in recent weeks.

On Nov. 19 a court sentenced Adel al-Mashhadani, a Sunni leader, to death for murder and kidnapping. He had quit the insurgency to join the so-called Awakening Councils allied to the Americans and undermine the jihadist forces.

The case underlined the growing antipathy between the Shiite-dominated government and the former insurgents who broke with al-Qaida in hopes of being absorbed into Iraq's security forces and the federal political process.

Maliki has played the Baathist card repeatedly in recent weeks, vowing to crush party loyalists still led by Saddam's former right-hand man, the red-haired Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, believed to be living in Damascus.

This has alarmed the Sunnis, who the Americans say must be part of any government if peace in Iraq is to be restored and relations with the Sunni-led regimes among Iraq's Arab neighbors normalized.

But Maliki's anti-Baathist campaign will undoubtedly bolster his standing among his fellow Shiites, who suffered badly under the Sunni-dominated regime that seized power in 1968 and who fear a Baathist revival.

In the meantime, the elections, initially planned for Jan. 16, have been postponed because the government had immense difficulty securing Parliament's approval for a new electoral law giving voters more freedom of choice and creating greater accountability on the part of elected officials.

It was finally passed on Nov. 8, but 10 days later it was vetoed by Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, because the new law allocated only eight of the 323 seats in an expanded Parliament for expatriate Iraqis, most of whom are Sunni. He wanted 24 seats.

This left the date of the elections uncertain and fueled fears that Iraq's feuding sects -- Shiite against Sunni, Arab against Kurd -- will once again be at each other's throats, possibly dooming the federal state. There are also major rifts within each of the three main factions.

If the crisis deepens, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq may also be placed in jeopardy, which could have a serious impact on U.S. President Barack Obama's grand plan for beefing up U.S. forces in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater.

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