Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has threatened to resign if lawmakers fail to pass a no-confidence vote against one of his deputies for calling him 'a dictator,' an aide was quoted as saying Tuesday.

Saleh al-Mutlaq had made the comment in an interview with broadcaster CNN last week.

'If the parliament does not pass a no-confidence motion against al-Mutlaq, I will be the one to resign in days,' al-Maliki told members of his State of Law coalition, the aide told the independent daily al-Mada.

Al-Mutlaq is Sunni Muslim, like Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi against whom an arrest warrant was issued on Monday on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of government officials.

Al-Hashimi and members of his security staff are accused of involvement in the November 28 bombing outside parliament, which al-Maliki said had targeted him.

Al-Hashemi and al-Mutlaq are leaders of the Iraqiya bloc, a secular group with strong Sunni support that joined the unity government last year.

Lawmakers are due to return to parliament in early January.

Meanwhile Tariq al-Hashemi has denied charges of involvement in acts of terrorism against government officials.

The denial comes a day after the Iraqi interior ministry issued an arrest warrant for Hashemi after three of his bodyguards made confessions of taking orders from the vice president to carry out terrorist attacks in the country over the past years.

The interior ministry showed videos of the confessions during a press conference in Baghdad on Monday, a Press TV correspondent reported.

The bodyguards said they took orders from Hashemi “personally and he was the one who paid them.”

Ghassan Jassim Hameed, one of the bodyguards, said, “He (Hashemi) told me that I have to join his group to implement attacks and assassinations against Iraqi officials.”

Another bodyguard, Ahmed Shawqi, said his first assignment “in 2009 was planting an IED (improvised explosive device) to assassinate an official within the health ministry.”

On Tuesday, an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the Iraqi premier called on different political groups to resolve the “crisis” in the country.

The Iraqiya party, which holds 82 of the 325 seats in the Iraqi parliament, issued a statement on Saturday, saying the bloc “is suspending its participation in parliament from Saturday and calling for the opening of a round-table to find a solution that will support democracy and civil institutions.”

Iraqiya is a political coalition of Hashimi's Renewal List party, the Iraqi National List led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue led by Saleh al-Mutlak.

Adil Daham, a spokesman for the Iraqi interior ministry, said the arrest warrant was issued “according to Article 4 of the Iraqi Constitution.”

The Iraqi vice president has reportedly flown to the northern city of Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.