President Bashar al-Assad of Syria responded angrily to Iraq’s assertions on Monday, saying that Iraq had provided no evidence for its claims. “The least that can be said about this accusation is that it’s immoral,” Mr. Assad said, saying that Syria was host to 1.2 million refugees from the war in Iraq, The Associated Press reported from Damascus, the Syrian capital.  Mr. Maliki, for his part, claimed that 90 percent of foreign fighters involved in attacks inside Iraq passed through Syria. Officials have long accused Syria of failing to halt the flow, though American military officials have recently said the number of fighters had dwindled, perhaps as a result of diplomatic entreaties from the Obama administration.  On Sunday, Iraq’s state television network broadcast remarks from a second suspect officials said had been trained in Syria, one week after a similar video confession was shown.  “Since 2004, Iraq has given to Syria the names, addresses, information, documents and evidence on the activities of terrorists and some known extremist groups, their locations and methods of infiltration across Syrian territory,” Mr. Maliki said after meeting Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who arrived in Baghdad on Monday in an effort to mediate.  The younger Mr. Hakim takes over at a time when the once-dominant Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council has lost ground among Shiites, largely at the expense of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa party, which prevailed in provincial elections with a less overtly sectarian appeal based on restoring security.  It remains to be seen whether Mr. Hakim can command the same authority as his father, who led the party from 2003 until illness forced him from active participation.  Though the son has long been groomed for the party’s leadership and served as the head of its social organization, which builds and runs hospitals, libraries, schools and food banks, he was not instrumental in the party’s transition from an exiled opposition group to a major force in Iraq after Mr. Hussein was toppled.  “It’s not his age, per se,” Kenneth Katzman, who follows Iraqi politics for the Congressional Research Service in Washington, said of Mr. Hakim’s challenge in leading the party. “It’s because he was not involved in the big decisions,” he said, including the party’s founding in Iran in 1982 and its cooperation with the United States before and after the 2003 invasion.  Only days before the death of its leader, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council joined a new coalition of mostly Shiite parties that hopes to prevail in elections now scheduled for January. Mr. Maliki refused to join, splintering Iraq’s largest electoral bloc.  At one of several eulogies for his father over the weekend, Mr. Hakim called on Mr. Maliki and others to reconsider their decisions not to join the new coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance.  Despite his new position, Mr. Hakim is not expected to take over the alliance and thus run as its candidate for prime minister. The alliance has not yet signaled who will lead it in the elections, though the leading contenders are Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a member of the party Mr. Hakim now leads, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a former prime minister.  In Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, a car bomb killed at least 4 and wounded 17, most of them civilians, Monday evening. The bombing, in the Qara Taba district north of Baquba, occurred on a street of markets as Iraqis broke the Ramadan fast.  Riyadh Mohammed contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Diyala Province.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Son to Follow Father as Leader of Iraqi Shiite Party. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council nominated Ammar al-Hakim to fill the vacuum left by his father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who died of cancer last week.