ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A top Iraqi Shiite official said Thursday that the political crisis pitting Shiite officials against his country's largest Sunni-backed bloc must end.

But Ammar al-Hakim, a powerful cleric and leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, did not offer any change in the legal challenge that started the standoff: An arrest warrant that Iraq's Shiite-led government filed against the Sunni vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi, on terrorism charges, sending him into virtual exile to the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.

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