Najaf, Iraq - Followers of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday suggested that they may be willing to rejoin the largest coalition in the Iraqi parliament, in a possible indication of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's increasingly strong position.

"We support the idea of renewing the former coalition, in what should be called the United Iraqi National Alliance," al-Sadr's office said in a press release Friday.

The United Iraqi Alliance - a coalition of Shiite parties, including al-Maliki's Dawaa Party, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, and Sadr's followers - won more seats than any other coalition in parliamentary elections in 2005.

Al-Sadr's followers left the government in 2007 after a dispute over a time-line for the withdrawal of foreign troops in Iraq. The Sadrist movement did not run its own candidates in the January 2008 provincial council elections, but said it was supporting individual candidates across the country.

Preliminary results in those elections showed the United Iraqi Alliance winning in Iraq's nine predominantly Shiite provinces, in what many observers saw as a vote of confidence for the government.

Sheikh Youssef al-Nasseri, a Shiite scholar who teaches in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's holiest cities, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Friday that he believed the Sadrist movement was manoeuvring to rejoin the government ahead of parliamentary elections tentatively scheduled for the end of this year.

"The Sadrist movement has good relations with al-Maliki's Dawaa party," he said. "And now that the American forces are leaving Iraq, the Sadrists can see the government as a national government, not a government under occupation."

Al-Nasseri said he believed the move may have also been prompted by al-Maliki's performance.

"Iraq is changing ... for the better," al-Nasseri said. "Al-Maliki has done a good job of convincing the Americans to leave and convincing people to put down their guns and to seek change through the political process."

Al-Nasseri stressed that while he could not speak on behalf of the movement, he advised al-Sadr's followers on religious matters as he "advised all Iraqis."

A spokesman from al-Maliki's Dawaa party could not immediately be reached for comment, and a spokesman for the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council told dpa that the group was still studying al-Sadr's proposal and would have a reaction on Saturday.

They may have wished to study some of the conditions that al- Sadr's office set on their participation in the coalition.

"The United Iraqi Alliance's policies have failed," the statement said, "because of its autocratic decisions, sectarian bent, and its failure to address the people's suffering. All this has led Iraq into the abyss."

Al-Sadr's office called for new alliances based along non- sectarian lines, saying that "sectarian powers have caused only conflicts, hunger, and poverty." (dpa)