DHULUIYA, IRAQ — Iraqi politics has a new catchphrase, the “;yes we can”; of the country's coming parliamentary elections. It is “;national unity,”; and while skepticism abounds, it could well signal the decline of the religious and sectarian parties that have fractured Iraq since 2003.

Across the political spectrum—Sunni and Shiite, secular and Islamic—party leaders have jettisoned explicit appeals to their traditional followers and are now scrambling to reach across ethnic or sectarian lines. In some cases, the shift is nothing less than extraordinary.

Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite whose party has deep Islamic roots, has enlisted support from Sunni tribal leaders in areas that once were—and might again be—the heartland of opposition to the central government.

Here in Dhuluiya, a lush town nestled in a bend of the Tigris River, a fiery Sunni cleric who waged war against American and Iraqi forces openly courts an alliance with al-Maliki, saying the time of religious parties in Iraq has passed. The cleric, Mullah Nadhim Khalil al-Jubori, said Iraq's future now rested with secular political parties.

“;It would be ironic,”; he said of his own evolution in an interview at his home, “;if it were somewhere other than Iraq.”;

With the elections less than four months away, the emergence of national unity as a theme has been welcomed by Iraqis and by American officials, who fear that identity politics in Iraq will only worsen tensions and risk a return to sectarian bloodshed.

Some go so far as to say the elections could reinforce a greater sense of Iraqi citizenship and nationalism out of the chaos of the war.

“;I do believe that there is genuine opportunity for restoring our coexistence, our historical coexistence,”; said Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who broke with the main Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, this year. “;I mean, in the past, we used to live together here. What we need, in fact, is real and genuine reconciliation.”;

Such appeals stem from pragmatism, perhaps as much as from conviction, and that motivation is why many people view the apparent transformations of some parties cynically. Even as Iraq's political leaders all pledge national unity, parliament remains so paralyzed by infighting that lawmakers are unable to pass any significant legislation, including the very bill required to hold the next elections, scheduled for Jan. 16.

Even so, party leaders agree that something fundamental is changing in the mood of Iraqi voters.

Provincial elections last January showed diminishing popular support for religious or purely sectarian parties. Al-Maliki's coalition, known as State of Law, had the strongest showing after playing down the religious roots of his own Shiite party, Dawa, and promising security, rule of law and a nationalistic government representative of all parts of the country.

Haider al-Abbadi, a member of al-Maliki's party in parliament, referring to the beginning of widespread sectarian killings, said, “;What happened in 2006 showed people a taste of what will happen in a sectarian system.”;

Now as the national elections approach, the parties and movements that make up Iraq's political kaleidoscope—296 in all, large and small—are working eagerly to replicate State of Law's tactic.

This opening phase of the campaign has become a contest of assembling coalitions with the broadest and most representative cast—what Ali al-Mousawi, one of al-Maliki's aides, called “;the colors of the Iraqi bouquet.”;

Jawad al-Bolani, the interior minister and a Shiite, pledged that his Constitution Party would run on the “;concept of citizenship”; with a preliminary agreement to ally with a Sunni party from Anbar province led by the prominent tribal leader there, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha.

Even the main Shiite parties that dominated the elections in 2005—in part because most Sunnis boycotted them—this time included Sunni, Turkmen and Kurdish parties, as well as historically secular leaders, when they announced their coalition in August. In keeping with the times, they called it the Iraqi National Alliance.

“;We learned very important lessons,”; said Ammar al-Hakim, who took over one of the alliance's largest parties, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, after his influential father died in August. “;And we're preparing for the next phase. This is democracy.”;

Al-Maliki refused to join the new alliance, despite public appeals and, his aides said, diplomatic pressure from Iran to unite Iraq's Shiites. Instead, after meetings with Sunnis, Turkmens, Kurds, Christians and Shiites in trips across Iraq, al-Maliki is expected to announce his own coalition on Thursday.

In the past week alone, he has won public pledges of support from tribal leaders in Kirkuk and, on Monday, from an independent alliance led by the minister of displacement and migration, Abdul Samad Sultan, a Kurd.

“;We both come from Islamic roots,”; Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni who was the speaker of parliament until he was ousted last year, said in an interview in which he also pledged to join al-Maliki's coalition. “;It's not important that you're from this sect or that sect, but that you're a nationalist.”;

How deep exactly national unity will take root remains to be seen.

“;The provincial elections have shown that the Iraqi public is fed up with religiously garbed parties, so these parties are now scrambling to profile themselves as secular and nonsectarian,”; said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, who met with several party leaders while in Baghdad this week. “;But does the leopard change its spots?”;

Here in Dhuluiya, a Sunni town enveloped in orchards and date groves, Mullah Nadhim represents the shift in Iraqi politics at its most extreme.

He is the scion of a religious family whose members lead the town's largest mosque. After the American invasion in 2003, he joined the insurgency and fought American and Iraqi forces for four years. In 2007 he turned against al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, the homegrown insurgent group that American intelligence says has some foreign leadership, which controlled the town from its headquarters across the street from his mosque.

Like many Sunni fighters, he became a leader of the Awakening movement of fighters who joined American and Iraqi forces. Dhuluiya still has 700 of them, now paid by the Iraqi government.

Mullah Nadhim is 31, burly and, now, cleanshaven. His remarks and his sermons remain fiery; he clashed with an American colonel after he flew a defaced Israeli flag to protest the fighting in Gaza last winter.

But despite his own religious convictions, Mullah Nadhim denounces religious parties that aim to represent only Sunnis or Shiites. In his view, al-Maliki has undergone the same transformation.

“;I do not at all regret the armed struggle,”; Mullah Nadhim said of his four years in the insurgency, “;but I'm sorry that there was no political process parallel to it.”;