Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his ministers to quit Iraq’s government yesterday in protest at Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s refusal to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal.

Sadr’s populist movement, which draws its support mainly from Iraq’s Shi’ite poor, holds six ministries and a quarter of the parliamentary seats in Maliki’s fractious Shi’ite Alliance, a coalition of Shi’ite Islamist parties.

“The Prime Minister has to express the will of the Iraqi people. They went out in a demonstration in their millions asking for a timetable for withdrawal. We noticed the Prime Minister’s response did not express the will of the people, ” the head of the bloc in parliament, Nassar al-Rubaie told a news conference, reading a statement on Sadr’s behalf.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis answered a call by Sadr to rally in the holy Shi’ite city of Najaf last week to protest against the presence of some 140,000 US-led forces in Iraq. Sadr himself did not appear – US officials say he is in hiding in Iran, but his aides insist he is still in Iraq.