Cleric Agrees To Give Up Shrine
An aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said the militant leader instructed his followers late Thursday to turn over the keys of the revered Shiite shrine they were hiding in to top religious authorities in Iraq.
Aws al-Khafaji, the head of al-Sadr's office in Nasiriya, told the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television station that the cleric asked his Mahdi Army militia to give control of the revered Imam Ali Shrine compound to officials from the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric.
The government had called on al-Sadr's followers to lay down their arms, evacuate the shrine and disband their militia or Iraqi forces would storm the holy site and wipe them out.
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi had issued a "final call" Thursday to al-Sadr and his insurgents to disarm and withdraw from the revered shrine after his government threatened a massive onslaught by Iraqi forces. As the peace deal for Najaf unraveled, militants bombarded a police station with mortar rounds, killing seven police and injuring 31 others.
Allawi's last-ditch warning came shortly after al-Sadr rejected the government's ultimatum with a vow to seek "martyrdom or victory."
Hours after Allawi issued a final call to al-Sadr's militants, more than 30 explosions shook the Old City of Najaf late Thursday.
In other developments:
Al-Arabiya television showed a copy of a letter al-Sadr reportedly sent to his followers late Thursday. The handwritten letter had al-Sadr's office's seal, but not his signature, the station said.
"I call on the religious authority again to receive the shrine so that it won't be taken by the hands of the enemy and of treason. I have offered it to you before and you have refused before the (latest) incidents," the letter read.
However, al-Sadr refused to disband the militia, according to the letter, saying it belonged to Imam Mahdi, the Shiite messiah.
"Let everyone know that this army is the Imam Mahdi's base, and I have no right to ever disband it," the letter said.
The letter also rejected any political role for al-Sadr's followers.
"I will never take part in any political work as along as the occupation is there. I will continue, all my life, to build Iraq, its freedom, independence and liberation," the letter said.
Gunbattles persisted Thursday through the streets of Najaf, wracked by violence since the Shiite militant uprising began two weeks ago. Witnesses said a U.S. warplane fired missiles at a hotel in a neighborhood where Mahdi Army militants were known to take up fighting positions.
U.S. forces and Shiite insurgents also fought in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, where more than 50 militants and civilians were killed Thursday, Mahdi Army spokesman Na'eem al-Kaabi said.
Just a day earlier, al-Sadr — in a letter to a national conference in Baghdad — had accepted a peace plan to disarm his fighters, withdraw from the Imam Ali Shrine and turn to politics in exchange for amnesty. But the cleric also insisted he be allowed to negotiate the terms of the plan's implementation, a demand the government dismissed.
Reiterating the refusal to negotiate with the armed militants, Allawi called on al-Sadr to accept the government demands to end the Najaf fighting personally — not through aides or letters as he has been communicating so far.
"When we hear from him and that he is committed to execute these conditions we will ... give him and his group protection," the prime minister said in a Baghdad news conference.
Allawi's demand that al-Sadr personally accept the peace deal appeared to be a step back from Minister of State Qassim Dawoud's earlier ultimatum, demanding that al-Sadr's militia immediately evacuate the shrine and drop its weapons to stave off a government offensive.
While government ministers had threatened a possible offensive in Najaf in the coming hours, Allawi set no deadline, saying only "we need to have a solution soon."
Any threatened raid on the Imam Ali Shrine could inflame the country's majority Shiite population against the government, especially if the holy site were damaged. Other Muslim countries, including Shiite Iran, have appealed to the Iraqi government to seek a peaceful solution to the crisis.
U.S. troop action against the shrine also would increase outrage in the Shiite world, but Iraqi officials have said a crack squad of Iraqi troops would lead an assault on the poorly trained militants, and U.S. forces would not go inside the compound.
The crisis in Najaf poses the greatest challenge yet to the authority of Allawi's fledgling government, which is seeking to gain support from skeptical Iraqis and bring stability to the violence-plagued country.
The Najaf violence has spread to other Shiite communities, including Baghdad's Sadr City slum. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that 50 militants were killed in recent fighting.
As part of the government's ultimatum to disarm or risk attack, al-Sadr must also sign a statement saying he will refrain from future violence and release all civilians and Iraqi security forces his militants have kidnapped. In addition, al-Sadr must hold a news conference to announce he is disbanding the Mahdi Army.
Al-Sadr quickly rejected the demands, according to Haidar al-Tourfi, an official at al-Sadr office's office in Najaf. "Either martyrdom or victory," was the cleric's response, sent in a text message presumably from his hideout inside the holy city, al-Tourfi said.