Followers loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said yesterday they were prepared to hand control of the revered Imam Ali Shrine to top Shiite religious authorities in a bid to end a two-week-old uprising in the holy city of Najaf.
Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi stepped back yesterday from his government's previous threats to send a crack force of Iraqi troops into the shrine to root out the militants, a move that could damage the holy site and further enrage the nation's majority Shiites.
"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 yesterday. "We are not going to attack the shrines at all."
Allawi, who a day earlier made a final call on al-Sadr's followers to capitulate, said yesterday that a peaceful end to the crisis was still possible.
"We have extended the olive branch, the olive branch is still extended, he can take advantage of the olive branch," Allawi said. "We want a peaceful solution."
In a sermon read on his behalf in the nearby Kufa Mosque, al-Sadr said he wanted the religious authorities to take control of the Old City from his Mehdi Army, though he also called on all Muslims to rise up if the shrine is attacked.
"I call on the Arab and Islamic people: If you see the dome of the holy Imam Ali Shrine shelled, don't be lax in resisting the occupier in your countries," he said.
It was unclear if al-Sadr was calling for worldwide attacks on US forces -- which he often refers to as Iraq's occupier.
Fighting between insurgents and a combined US-Iraqi force on Thursday and early yesterday killed 77 people and injured 70, Iraq's Health Ministry reported yesterday afternoon.
Al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany said yesterday he was headed to the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-
Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, to offer to present officials there with keys to the shrine. If they agree -- which is not a certainty -- the shrine could be handed over later yesterday, he said.
"We don't want to appease the government ... we want to appease the Iraqi people," he said.
Aides to al-Sistani, who is in London receiving medical care, said they would need to discuss how any handover would be implemented.
However, "the religious authority would be positive about this issue to help solve the ongoing crisis," Sheik Hamed Khafaf, an al-Sistani aide, said from London.
With peace efforts continuing, Najaf appeared quieter yesterday morning than it has in weeks. US tanks were on the streets, but residents reported seeing some of al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia pulling out of the Old City.
The Imam Ali Shrine compound, which had been filled with hun-dreds of chanting and bellicose gunmen in recent days, appeared far calmer yesterday. Video of the compound and its outskirts, shown on al-Jazeera TV, revealed far fewer people inside and no armed men.
US forces said they were still geared up for a fight.
"We are continuing to do planning and preparations for continuous offensive operations to get Mehdi militia destroyed, to capture Muqtada al-Sadr and to turn the holy shrine back to the Iraqi people," Lieutenant Colonel Myles Miyamasu, of the 1st Cavalry Division, told CNN yesterday.
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