Thousands of Shiite Muslims hit the streets of four Iraqi cities on Tuesday, calling on the US to hand over Saddam Hussein to be tried as a war criminal and demanding a bigger say in their political future.
The fresh rallies followed a march through Baghdad on Monday by tens of thousands of people from the majority Shiite community demanding direct elections to decide who controls Iraq when the US hands back power in June.
PHOTO: AFP
Many of Tuesday's protesters were supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand religious leader who has expressed support for Iraq's most revered cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Sistani and his followers, long persecuted by Saddam, have proven a thorn for the US by opposing its plans to let regional caucuses appoint a transitional authority to take power at the end of June, instead of letting all Iraqis vote.
"We demand elections or we will bury every American here," said one Shiite cleric, Sattar Jabbar.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush welcomed the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, as a guest at his State of the Union address to Congress.
"Sir, America stands with you and the Iraqi people as you build a free and peaceful nation," said Bush, who made no direct reference to the mass demonstrations in Iraq.
Bush did seek to answer US critics of his Iraq policy.
"Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq," he said. "Objections to war often come from principled motives," he added, while insisting his past claims that Saddam was an imminent threat to the US and the West would be vindicated over time.
"Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day," he said.
In the southern Shiite city of Basra, several thousand protesters demanded Saddam be executed. "We want Saddam dead or alive. We demand Saddam's execution," they chanted.
In Baghdad and the Shiite holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf, similar numbers demanded Saddam be declared a war criminal and handed over for trial soon.
The US declared Saddam a prisoner of war on Jan. 9 following his capture the previous month. Washington has said he will eventually be handed over to Iraqi authorities to be tried under a special tribunal.
But many Iraqis distrust Washington, and are worried they will not get a chance to bring Saddam to justice.
In New York, diplomats said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was expected to decide within a week whether to send a political team to Iraq to tackle the Shiite calls for polls.
Washington, which went to war in Iraq without the backing of most of the UN Security Council and for months opposed a wider UN role in Iraq, now wants the world body to help by convincing Iraqis elections cannot be held yet.
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