"I don't see the country falling into a civil war despite the regrettable activities of certain people who ignore that Iraq is united," Mr Maliki said in the Kurdish city of Arbil.
"The security services are still in control of the situation and we would like to see matters move towards political (compromise) rather than resort to force," he added.
"We have the capacity, if necessary, to impose order and suppress those who rebel against the state."
However, a number of Iraqi MPs have expressed concerns over the security situation, especially in Baghdad where a massive security clampdown has been ongoing since last month.
Fight over mosque
In a sign of the tensions, gunmen and residents clashed with Iraqi forces who tried to raid a mosque in the volatile and predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Amiriyah in western Baghdad.
The fighting started when special police forces, known as commandos, approached the Mluki mosque, one of the largest in the area.
A recent burst of violence has threatened to tear apart the capital on sectarian lines, with dozens of people killed on a daily basis.
In a spate of bombings, shootings and gunbattles more than 40 people died across Iraq on Tuesday.
In the deadliest attack, 10 Shiites carrying a coffin in a minibus were ambushed and killed by gunmen on a highway near Baghdad's volatile Sunni neighbourhood of Dura.
In ousted president Saddam Hussein's northern hometown of Tikrit, the wife of the provincial governor was killed in a bomb explosion as she treated patients in her clinic.
A time bomb left in her surgery killed Amira al-Rubaie, a gynaecologist, and four of her patients were wounded in the attack.
Insurgent leader arrested
Meanwhile Poland’s defence minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, says that Iraqi security forces have arrested the suspected head of a terrorist cell linked to Al Qaeda accused of being behind several murders and kidnappings.
"Salah Khabbas, 38, is a former member of the Ba'ath party, which after the fall of the regime (of Saddam Hussein), organised and funded a terrorist cell of five to eight people that is linked to Al Qaeda," said Mr Sikorski in the Polish capital Warsaw.
Khabbas was arrested by Iraqi security officers acting on intelligence provided to them by Polish military police, Mr Sikorski said.
The cell led by Khabbas "organised assaults and bomb attacks against convoys and individual vehicles on the road between Baghdad and al-Hillah, as well as the kidnappings and murders of Iraqi and foreign citizens," he added.
Khabbas is suspected of being behind the deadly attack in May 2004 that claimed the lives of Polish television journalist Waldemar Milewicz and his assistant Moumir Bouamrane.
He is also suspected of being involved in the kidnapping in October 2004 of another Polish national, Teresa Borcz, who was later freed.
A group called Abu Bakr Siddiq Al-Salafia later claimed responsibility for her kidnapping.
Poland is one of Washington's staunchest supporters in the military campaign in Iraq and has 880 soldiers stationed in Iraq.