Though the constitutional deadline for the new cabinet is not until May 21, Maliki, following his nomination last month as the prime minister-designate, had pledged to have the government ready by Wednesday.
According to sources close to the negotiations, the delay in the formation of Iraq's new government is centered around a dispute within the dominant Shia alliance over who will head the oil ministry.
The 275-member parliament adjourned on Wednesday after MPs read out the assembly's new internal procedures and agreed to reconvene on Sunday, hoping that Iraq's cabinet would finally be ready.
Three Shia candidates are currently vying for the oil minister's post, with prominent independent Shia politician Hussein Shahristani emerging as the frontrunner.
"The choice of Shahristani is nearly final because in the next period we need an honest, competent, transparent candidate, especially considering that oil is the government's main source of revenue," a source close to the debate said.
He added that Shahristani was Maliki's choice.
Thamer Al Ghadban, an experienced petroleum engineer that ran the ministry under former-premier Ayad Allawi, is the other main candidate while the Shia Fadhila party wants acting minister Hashem Al Hashemi, an MP from the party, to retain his post.
Nearly five months after the mid-December elections, violence has spiraled out of control as armed Shia and Sunni groups carry out attacks daily against civilians.
Iraq's President Jalal Talabani on Wednesday said that at least 1,091 people had been killed last month in Baghdad in the ongoing wave of sectarian bloodshed.
Iraq's outgoing interior minister Bayan Jabr Solagh said on Tuesday that much of the violence was carried out by renegade security units. He named the Facility Protection Service (FPS), a special division guarding ministry buildings and other infrastructure installations, as a main culprit.
Solagh called for the formation of a single security force for the capital, a plan that the interior ministry says that it is now moving forward on.
Violence continued in the nation's capital on Thursday when four street cleaners were killed by a bomb hidden in the wealthy Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad.
Elsewhere in the city, investigative Judge Firas Mohammed was killed as he drove to work in western Baghdad when a car pulled up beside him and its passengers sprayed him with bullets.
Meanwhile in Baquba, north of Baghdad, police arrested 36 insurgents who had kidnapped residents from Ben Saad village just south of the city.
"The insurgents raided the village and kidnapped a number of civilians," said police. On their way back into Baquba they were stopped at a police checkpoint and clashes ensued. Seven hostages were freed.
Earlier in Baquba high-school history teacher Widad Al Shaml was shot in the head and killed in a drive-by shooting as she was walking her daughter to school.
Her 12-year-old daughter took a bullet in the leg but survived.
Two Iraqi army soldiers were also killed and four others wounded near Balad, north of Baghdad, in a roadside bomb attack.
A US soldier also died in a roadside bombing southwest of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, escapees from one of the US-led coalition's main prisons were still at large on Thursday even as a major search involving US and Iraqi forces was underway for them around Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq's Kurdish region.
The head of security in the Kurdish area Seif Al Din blamed the negligence of prison guards for Tuesday's escape of several Sunni Arab prisoners, charged with terrorism, from Fort Suse.
Five of the Kurdish guards in the US-administered prison have been arrested for questioning, and Din added that the prisoners escaped through air ducts.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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