Iraq Shiites Urge Cleric to Desist
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: May 5, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 4 — <font size=4>Representatives of Iraq's most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control.
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The Shiite leaders also called, in speeches and in interviews after the meeting, for a rapid return to the American-led negotiations on Iraq's political future. The negotiations have been sidelined for weeks by the upsurge in violence associated with Mr. Sadr's uprising across central and southern Iraq and the simultaneous fighting in Falluja, the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad.
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On Tuesday, the Shiite leaders including a representative of a Shiite clerical group that has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani effectively did what the Americans have urged them to do since Mr. Sadr, a 31-year-old firebrand, began his attacks in April: they tied Iraq's future, and that of Shiites in particular, to a renunciation of violence and a return to negotiations.
They did so in the capital, Baghdad, more muscularly than they have in the past.
Their statement repeated warnings to American troops not to enter Najafand Karbala in pursuit of Mr. Sadr. Although American commanders have hinted at an offensive soon against against Mr. Sadr's force, the Mahdi Army, they have repeatedly said they do not intend to attack Najaf or Karbala.
The Shiite leaders demanded that Mr. Sadr "hand over all state facilities" in the two cities — meaning police stations, civil defense headquarters, and other government buildings held by the militia — to the government, meaning groups authorized by the occupation authority. They condemned Mr. Sadr for "turning the holy cities into arsenals," a reference to stockpiling weapons in some of Shiism's holiest shrines, and to reports that his militia has used one mosque — in Kufa, where Mr. Sadr appears to have established his headquarters — to fire mortars at an American base nearby. <font size=3>
Although Shiite leaders have made similar demands of Mr. Sadr as individuals or in small groups before, Tuesday's meeting was the first in such numbers; about 150 leaders attended, representing many of Shiism's most influential political, religious and professional groups. One group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, regarded as Iraq's top Shiite cleric and Iraq's most influential political voice.
They convened in Baghdad on short notice, reflecting their urgency to calm a month's violence sown by Mr. Sadr across much of southern Iraq. Equally disturbing to many Shiites, American occupation officials, faced with the dual challenges from Mr. Sadr and Sunni Muslim insurgents in Falluja, have handed some authority in Falluja to elements of Saddam Hussein's former army, despised by Shiites as an instrument of his repression.
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Several Shiite leaders acknowledged that they had delayed issuing their statement until there were clear signs that public opinion among Shiites had moved strongly against Mr. Sadr. Reports in the past two weeks have spoken of a shadowy death squad calling itself the Thulfiqar Army shooting dead at least seven of Mr. Sadr's militiamen in Najaf, and several thousand people attended an anti-Sadr protest meeting outside the Imam Ali shrine in the city on Friday, according to several of the meeting's participants.
Mr. Mahdi, from the Sciri group, which is close to Ayatollah Sistani, was blunt about Mr. Sadr's decline in popularity. "He's 100 percent isolated across most of the southern provinces; he's even isolated in Najaf," he said. "The people there regard him as having taken them hostage." He said Mr. Sadr had also been criticized by his most powerful religious backer, Grand Ayatollah Kazem Hossein Haeri, based in the Iranian city of Qum, who had urged Mr. Sadr to pull his militiamen out of Najaf and Karbala and to stop storing weapons in mosques.
Several speakers implied that the Sunni minority intended to derail the American-led political process, and thus the prospect of a Shiite majority government. On few occasions, if any, since the American invasion last year, have mainstream Shiite leaders spoken so bluntly in public about the political rivalry with the Sunnis, who were referred to repeatedly by speakers as "they" or "the other side," and barely at all by name.
Before joining with other Shiite leaders for the Tuesday meeting here, Shiites on the governing council, including Mr. Mahdi, had a tempestuous meeting with the two top American officials in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian chief of the occupation authority, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of American forces. At one point, the council members said, they told the Americans they were risking civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite communities by endorsing the Falluja deal with elements of Mr. Hussein's old army.
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