The Governing Council itself has a Shiite majority, and al-Hakim and other members have cautiously pressed for the council to continue existing after July 1, the date set for it to cede to a new transitional government. On Wednesday, he said the council's fate was still being discussed -- the first indication from a senior member that the future of the body was far from sealed by the Nov. 15 agreement.
Also on Wednesday, US soldiers captured a former Iraqi general suspected of recent contacts with Saddam.
US soldiers captured Brigadier General Daham al-Mahemdi, an ex-colonel of the elite Republican Guard who was promoted to general immediately before the war, in Fallujah, 50km west of Baghdad, the US military said.
Al-Mahemdi is suspected of keeping in indirect contact with Saddam, while directing guerrilla attacks on US soldiers in Fallujah. He was seized without a struggle, along with a pair of AK-47 automatic rifles and other weapons, the military statement said.
In Baghdad, US soldiers and Iraqi police also arrested a close aide to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt.
Amar Yassiri had been seized in a joint raid in Sadr City, a poor and mainly Shiite district in eastern Baghdad which serves as al-Sadr's main power base.
Kimmitt said Yassiri had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in an Oct. 12 ambush on US troops in Baghdad in which two soldiers died.
Al-Sadr, a harsh US critic, enjoys significant support among Iraq's underprivileged and young Shiites. His supporters have staged several large anti-US protests in recent months and clashed with US forces and followers of other Shiite clerics.
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