AFP - Iraq's presidential council demanded on Friday that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki suspend pro-government tribal councils so their legality could be reviewed amid an escalating quarrel over them."We demand that you intervene to order a halt to the work of these councils until there is agreement about them, in order to provide administrative and legal cover for them," the council said in a letter posted on its website.The so-called Support Councils have already drawn fire from Iraq's two main Kurdish parties, who earlier this month accused Maliki of creating his own militias to consolidate Baghdad's grip on ethnically mixed regions.

But the council statement -- coming from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, Shiite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi and Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, could set the stage for a wider political brawl over the groups.The council has a veto power over all laws ratified by parliament.Maliki has defended the Support Councils as a natural outgrowth of the Sahwa (Awakening) movement that began in the western province of Anbar in 2006, when the government allied with local Sunni militias to drive out Al-Qaeda.

The Sahwas have since expanded across the country and have played a key role in the dramatic improvement in security over the past year.But the presidential council said the Support Councils formed more recently might be unnecessary and required legal review."For us to begin today to form councils paid for by the national budget to assume a role that has no known institutional or legal place, this is a situation that needs a serious pause," it said.The statement said officials outside of the prime minister's office had received no briefings about the councils and were relying solely on press reports and public statements.

Both the Kurds and Shiite rivals to Maliki have objected to the councils, viewing them as an instrument of expanding the premier's power, fears that could deepen ahead of provincial elections slated for January.