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Najaf shrine standoff appears near resolution
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-08-21 09:10
A rebel cleric's militiamen kept their guns outside a holy site Friday after
issuing a surprise offer to give up control of the Imam Ali Shrine to Shiite
Muslim religious leaders, but negotiators wrangled into the night over getting
the militants out of the compound.
Al Mahdi soldiers loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr clash with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the besieged city of Najaf,
Iraq Friday Aug. 20, 2004. [AP Photo] |
The removal of weapons and pledge to hand over keys to religious authorities
was seen as a big step toward a resolution of the two-week faceoff in Najaf that
has killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds in fighting between Muqtada
al-Sadr's militia and a joint U.S.-Iraq force.
Offering a face-saving way out of the crisis, a peaceful pullout mediated by
religious authorities would allow Iraq's interim government to keep its pledge
not to negotiate and let the militants say they had not capitulated to U.S.-led
troops.
The development came just a day after al-Sadr's militants rejected a
government ultimatum to withdraw from the shrine or face an assault on the
walled compound. Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi backed off the threat after
the new offer from al-Sadr, and his national security adviser reiterated that
the government wanted al-Sadr to join the political process.
Al-Sadr has said previously he would not give in to the government demand to
disband his militia and take up politics. It remained unclear how the government
would react if that demand went unmet.
Sporadic explosions and gunfire were heard in the streets of this holy city,
but the clashes were far fewer and less intense than in previous days. Fighting
between Thursday and Friday mornings killed 77 people and wounded 70 others,
officials said.
Armed militants could be seen around the shrine before sundown, circulating
in the Old City district, but any who entered the Imam Ali compound left their
guns with comrades outside, then reclaimed them when they exited. Inside the
compound, unarmed fighters mingled with civilians.
An Associated Press reporter saw no weapons in the shrine. It was not
possible to check whether any weapons were hidden inside, though militia leaders
denied any were. No police or Iraqi security forces were in the shrine.
After nightfall, al-Sadr's aides were still negotiating details of the
shrine's handover to representatives of Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who is in a London hospital for treatment
of a heart problem.
It was not clear if the militia wanted its men to be able to stay in the
compound, which they have used as a refugee. But al-Sistani's representatives
insisted the fighters had to leave before they would take responsibility for the
shrine.
"If they want to vacate the holy shrine compound and close the doors, then
the office of the religious authority in holy Najaf will take these keys," an
al-Sistani aide, Sheik Hamed Khafaf said, from London. "Until now, this hasn't
happened."
The government was not part of the talks, and it continued to demand that
al-Sadr disband his militia and join in peaceful politics and help create a
democracy for Iraqis.
"We need to get rid of this militia and we need to get them to disarm and
leave the shrine," Iraqi National Security adviser Mouaffaq al-Rubaie said.
"There's no way we can build democracy in this country with a militia all over
the country."
A previous uprising led by al-Sadr in the spring ended with a series of
truces that kept his militia intact to fight in a new round of violence that
started Aug. 5. The government and the U.S. military have said any resolution to
the fighting should ensure there is no third round.
Meanwhile, insurgents ambushed a U.S. military patrol with a bomb Friday in
Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing two American soldiers and wounding
three, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry
Division.
The military also reported that two Marines had been killed in action in the
restive Anbar province, one on Wednesday and the other on Thursday. As of
Thursday, 947 U.S. personnel had died since the beginning of military operations
in Iraq in March 2003, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
West of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes staged two airstrikes Friday in Fallujah,
which is a hotbed of Sunni Muslim insurgents. Two people were killed and six
injured in the first attack just after midnight, said Dia'a al-Jumeili, a doctor
at Fallujah's main hospital. A second missile hit an industrial area in the
morning, wounding three people.
In Baghdad, troops from the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division pulled out of
the Sadr City slum, which saw fierce fighting between U.S. forces and al-Sadr's
supporters the day before.
Fighting throughout Baghdad killed 11 people and wounded 63 between Thursday
night and Friday night, the Health Ministry reported.
Police in the southern city of Amarah said al-Sadr militants blew up an oil
pipeline near town Friday. The extent of damage to the line, which runs from the
southern Bezergan oil field to a refinery in Amarah, was not immediately clear,
officials said. The attack came a day after Mahdi Army fighters set an oil
company's offices and warehouses on fire near Basra.
The sudden peace moves in Najaf headed off a government attack on the revered
shrine, which was certain to cause bloodshed and likely damage the gold-domed
mosque — a result that would enrage Shiites throughout the country and Muslims
throughout the world.
Iraqi officials had said they wanted to destroy the Mahdi Army to send a
strong message to insurgents across Iraq, but the prime minister said the offer
to give up control of the shrine meant a peaceful resolution was still possible.
"We are not going to attack the mosque. We are not going to attack Muqtada
al-Sadr and the mosque. Evidently we are not going to do this," Allawi told BBC
radio. "The olive branch is still extended — he can take advantage of the olive
branch."
As the militants negotiated the turnover of the shrine, an Interior Ministry
spokesman, Sabah Kadhim, briefly confused the situation by wrongly announcing
that police had raided the shrine and arrested 400 armed militants without
incident.
An AP reporter in the compound said no police officers were there and
militants continued to mill about. In an interview with Al-Jazeera television,
al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany called the government claim "very laughable."
There was no immediate explanation for Kadhim's announcement.
Meanwhile, an aide to al-Sadr said kidnappers promised Friday to release an
American journalist abducted in the southern city of Nasiriyah on Aug. 13.
The kidnappers, calling themselves the Martyrs Brigade, threatened a day
earlier to kill Micah Garen of New York within 48 hours. But an al-Sadr aide,
Sheik Aws al-Khafaji, said he spoke with the militants and was told they would
release Garen later Friday. By the end of the day, however, there were no
reports that Garen had been released.
Garen appeared in a video aired Friday on Al-Jazeera saying his captors were
treating him well. "I am an American journalist in Iraq and I've been asked to
deliver a message," he said. "I am in captivity and being treated well."
The Italian Foreign Ministry said Friday that Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni
had gone missing in Iraq. Baldoni, a freelance journalist who came to Iraq for
the news magazine Diario, was believed to have been in Najaf, the ministry
said.
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