Fri, Jun 11, 2004 page6

• Najaf clashes rage, saboteurs strike

  GUNMEN Attackers loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr tried to gain control of a Najaf police station, and an oil pipeline explosion played havoc with the power grid

  • AP
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  Shiite militiamen and Iraqi authorities fought for control of the police headquarters in the holy city of Najaf yesterday in the first skirmishes since a recent agreement to end weeks of bloody clashes. Four Iraqis were killed and 13 were injured, hospital and militia officials said.

  Gunmen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr attacked the station near the city's Revolution of 1920 Square after authorities tried to arrest suspected thieves, police and witnesses said. Al-Sadr's spokesman, Qais al-Khazali, said the police shot first and that militia leaders are trying to persuade fighters to lay down their weapons.

  Al-Khazali said that two of al-Sadr's followers were killed and several were injured.

  

  An oil pipeline burns in the desert near Beiji, Iraq, about 250km north of Baghdad, Wednesday.

  PHOTO: AP

  US troops were not involved, police said. However, al-Sadr's militia see the Iraqi police as being collaborators with US forces.

  The fighting comes only days after al-Sadr agreed to send his fighters home and pull back from the Islamic shrines in Najaf and its twin city of Kufa, handing over security to Iraqi police. The US Army also agreed to stay away from the holy sites to give Iraqi security forces a chance to end the standoff.

  In northern Iraq, saboteurs blew up a key oil pipeline earlier Wednesday, forcing a 10 percent cut on the national power grid as demand for electricity rises with Iraq's broiling summer heat.

  The pipeline blast near Beiji, 250km north of Baghdad, was the latest in a series of attacks by insurgents against infrastructure targets, possibly to shake public confidence as a new Iraqi government prepares to take power June 30.

  As world leaders applauded their newfound unity in passing a UN Security Council resolution on Iraqi sovereignty, Iraq's Kurdish leaders protested that the US and Britain refused to include an endorsement of the interim constitution in the UN resolution. The Kurdish leaders expressed fears they would be sidelined politically by the Shiite Arab majority.

  UN diplomats said the decision was made to keep a reference to the interim constitution -- the Transitional Administrative Law -- out of the resolution to appease Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who grudgingly accepted the charter when it was approved in March.

  Barham Salih, 44, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and a US favorite, announced Wednesday he would not accept the post of deputy prime minister for national security unless the powers were spelled out "appropriate to the position, sacrifice and important role of the Kurdish people," the PUK's KurdSat television reported.

  US and other multinational forces will remain in Iraq after the new government takes power at the end of the month under terms of the UN resolution.

  Prime Minister Iyad Allawi described the vote as a victory for Iraq because it declares an end to the military presence when a constitutionally elected government takes power in 2006 -- or before, if the Iraqi government requests it.

  "The resolution is very clear that once Iraq stands on its feet, then we would ask the multinational forces to leave Iraq," Allawi said.

  "This is ... an entirely a government issue," Allawi said.

  At the Group of Eight summit in the US, French President Jacques Chirac raised objections to US President George W. Bush's proposal for a wider but unspecified role for NATO in post-occupation Iraq.
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