BAGHDAD  Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Saturday that he would not seek re-election as leader of the Iraqi government after his current term ends in 2014. The statement came a day after Mr. Maliki, who began his second term in December, said he would cut his pay in half.

Antigovernment protests have been sweeping the Arab world, but a spokesman for the prime minister said Mr. Maliki’s decisions had nothing to do with regional developments.

Mr. Maliki is simply keeping a campaign promise to implement term limits, the spokesman said.

“Don’t take it in the frame of the recent wave with Ali Abdullah Saleh and whatever is going on,” the spokesman, Ali al-Moussawi, said in an interview, referring to the leader of Yemen who said last week that he would not run for another term. “What the prime minister has done is about the democratic process.”