HOLY CITY OF NAJAF, Iraq: Iraq's leading United Iraqi Alliance has set a mid-March deadline to form a government after Al-Marjaiyah Ad-Diniyah, or the top religious authority, represented by Ayatullah Sayyed Ali As-Sistani demanded on Saturday progress after more than a month of the country's first democratic elections.

Members of the UIA, the big winner in the Jan. 30 elections, met in central Baghdad and agreed to try to form a government and convene the 275-member National Assembly by March 15.

The alliance, which already has missed two target dates, gained 140 seats in the assembly during the election but is hoping to get the backing from the 75 seats held by Kurdish political parties so it can muster the required two-thirds majority to ensure control of top posts in the new government.

After meeting Ayatullah As-Sistani in Holy Najaf, one of the Sunni Arabs in the alliance Sheikh Fawaz Al-Jarba said that the elderly cleric urged the group “to unite and to form the new government as soon as possible and not to delay this issue any longer, and that the interests of Iraq and Iraqis should be their first priority.”

Muhammad Bahr-ul Uloum, an alliance deputy, said they agreed the National Assembly would convene “no later than March 15.”

Ayatullah As-Sistani also demanded the alliance members that they stop bickering.

“As-Sistani demanded that we put aside minor matters and that we should be united. I am not comfortable with the delay in holding the assembly,” said Mudhar Shawkat, a senior official in Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.