Sun, Aug 22, 2004 page1

• Militants bicker over Najaf shrine

  RELATIVE CALM Al-Sadr loyalists said they wanted a group from Iraq's top cleric to make sure the shrine's treasures were intact before they would hand it over

  • AP
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  Militants loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr remained in control of a revered Shiite shrine at the center of the crisis in Najaf yesterday as they bickered with top Shiite religious leaders over how to hand the holy site over.

  Despite the standoff, Najaf remained largely calm yesterday. Occasional explosions shook the city, but the violence was at a far lower level than fierce fighting that raged in the city earlier this week.

  

  Supporters of radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr walk past Najaf's Imam Ali shrine yesterday. Rebel Shiite fighters were firmly in control of the mosque, but the whereabouts of al-Sadr were unknown yesterday.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  The violence in the city and a threatened government raid of the mosque risked inflaming the nation's majority Shiites and undermining the interim government's efforts to bring stability to the country and gain legitimacy for itself.

  The crisis appeared on the verge of resolution on Friday with insurgents' surprising decision to remove their weapons from the Imam Ali Shrine, where they had been hiding, and turn the holy site over to top Shiite clerics. But the two sides were still debating how to arrange such a transfer yesterday.

  Al-Sadr aides said they tried to hand the keys over to representatives of Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who refused to accept them, demanding the shrine be evacuated first.

  Sheik Ali Smeisim, a senior al-Sadr aide, said the militants wanted a delegation from al-Sistani's office to first inspect the shrine and make sure its treasures were intact, so that al-Sadr's followers would not be accused of stealing or damaging anything. Only then will the militants leave, he said.

  Al-Sistani's aides say they will not send a delegation because of the security situation in the city.

  "If the brothers in the office of ... al-Sadr want to vacate the holy shrine compound and close the doors and hand over the keys, then the office of the religious authority in Najaf will take the keys for safekeeping until the crisis ends," Sheik Hamed Khafaf, an al-Sistani aide, said from London where the cleric is undergoing medical treatment.

  "We cannot receive the shrine compound unless they agree to this formula," he said.

  Another al-Sadr aide, Ahmed al-Shaibany, said earlier the keys had already been handed over, but later said that they had only offered to hand them over.

  The shrine's keys are for the shrine compound's outer gates, inner doors and safes.

  The proposed handover of the shrine to religious authorities offered a face-saving way to end fierce fighting between US and Iraqi forces and al-Sadr's militia that has killed scores of people.

  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 US-led troops.

  Meanwhile, attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a US military vehicle in the Iraqi capital early yesterday, killing one US soldier and wounding two others, the military said in a statement. As of Friday, 949 US service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March last year, according to the US Defense Department.

  A car bomb targeting a military supply convoy outside the city of Hillah, about 95km south of Baghdad, killed one Polish soldier and wounded six others yesterday, said Colonel Zdzislaw Gnatowski, a spokesman for the Polish army chief of staff in Warsaw. The convoy also came under heavy gunfire, he said.

  Elsewhere, one Iraqi National Guard soldier was killed and two guardsmen and three civilians were wounded when a bomb exploded in the northern city of Mosul, said Mahmoud Saadallah, a National Guard official.

  In Baqubah, 60km northeast of Baghdad, assailants detonated a roadside bomb after a US convoy drove by, said Hussein Ali, an official at Baqubah's main hospital. Two civilians were killed and four injured in the blast.

  In Sabtiya, 4km north of Baqubah, another roadside bomb exploded after a US convoy passed, killing a sanitation worker cleaning the street and wounding another man, said Mudher Sabah, another hospital official.
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