Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

So so sorry about Elsa .. God .. that hurts .. !

did you see this ?

Cleric Suspends Battle in Basra by Shiite Militia



By ERICA GOODE and JAMES GLANZ
BAGHDAD — The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Sunday called for his followers to stop fighting in Basra and in turn demanded concessions from Iraq’s government, after six days in which his Mahdi Army militia has held off an American-supported Iraqi assault on the southern port city.

The substance of Mr. Sadr’s statement, released Sunday afternoon, was hammered out in elaborate negotiations over the past few days with senior Iraqi officials, some of whom traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr, according to several officials involved in the discussions.

Still, though fighting was reported to have died down by late afternoon in Basra, it continued in Baghdad, including heavy combat by Iraqi and American troops and aircraft in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, casting uncertainty on the deal.

The negotiations with Mr. Sadr were seen as a serious blow for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory and who has been harshly criticized even within his own coalition for the stalled assault.

Last week, Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government’s military efforts in Basra have met with far more resistance than was expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki’s political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

And it was a chance for Mr. Sadr to flaunt his power, commanding both armed force and political strength that can forcefully challenge the other dominant Shiite parties, including Mr. Maliki’s Dawa movement and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. In the statement, Mr. Sadr told militia members “to end all military actions in Basra and in all the provinces” and “to cooperate with the government to achieve security.”

But Mr. Sadr also demanded concessions, including that the government grant a general amnesty for his followers, release all imprisoned members of the Sadrist movement who have not been convicted of crimes and bring back “the displaced people who have fled their homes as a result of military operations.”

It was not clear if the government was willing to meet those demands.

Mr. Sadr’s willingness to negotiate represents a significant shift from his stance in 2004, when he ordered his militia to fight to the death in the holy city of Najaf, and suggests that his political sophistication and strategic skills have grown in the last two years.

In an interview, Mahmoud al-Mashadani, the Parliament speaker and a senior Sunni politician, said, “With this statement, Sayyed Moktada al-Sadr proved that he is a good politician, working for the sake of Iraq.”

Over the past two years, Mr. Sadr’s popular support has eroded as his movement has gained a reputation for harboring criminals and thugs and carrying out vicious sectarian killings.

After the statement was released Sunday, a spokesman for Mr. Maliki, Ali al-Dabbagh, appearing on the television station Iraqiya, said that the government welcomed the action and that Mr. Sadr’s gesture demonstrated his “concern for Iraq and Iraqis.” And he insisted that the government offensive in Basra was not aimed specifically at Mr. Sadr’s militiamen but rather against rogue Shiite factions there, seemingly trying to leave room to maneuver with Mr. Sadr’s political organization.

Mr. Mashadani said negotiations on the statement involved senior Iraqi clerics and at least 10 senior Iraqi politicians from the main parties, including Iraq’s president, Jalal al-Talabani, a Kurd, representatives of Mr. Sadr in Najaf, and the prime minister himself.

There was some disagreement over exactly which government representatives traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr, but several negotiators said they believed that two members of Parliament were involved: Ali Adeeb, of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party, and Hadi al-Amiri, who heads the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council.

The substance of the nine points in Mr. Sadr’s statement was developed in the course of those sprawling negotiations, said Saleh al-Obeidi, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr in Najaf. Overall, the statement was “a kind of proposal to the government” to help the citizens of Basra, Mr. Obeidi said.

He said the proposal was accepted, and Mr. Sadr made the statement.

The continuing fighting on Sunday left the ultimate significance of the statement uncertain, said Qassim Daoud, a former national security adviser who leads a secular Shiite party that has supported Mr. Maliki in the past. But the muddle that has emerged from what was supposed to be a decisive assault has serious consequences for the prime minister, Mr. Daoud said.

“The government now is in a weak position,” he said. “They claimed that they are going to disarm the militias and they didn’t succeed.”

Asked if the erosion of support for Mr. Maliki could cause his government to fall, Mr. Daoud paused and said, “Everything is possible.”

He said Mr. Maliki began the campaign in Basra without consulting outside his inner circle or members of Parliament.

American officials have insisted that the Basra campaign is an Iraqi-led operation, though they have repeatedly pushed Mr. Maliki to crack down on the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias.

In Basra and nearby Nasiriya on Sunday, Mr. Sadr’s statement appeared to have a quieting effect as the afternoon wore on. But just minutes after the statement, two mortar rounds struck the presidential palace in Basra. And earlier, American and British air and artillery strikes continued for a time in the city. For the first time, the American military said Sunday that some American Special Operations units had been fighting in the city as well.

In and around Baghdad, which has been virtually paralyzed by fighting and protests over the last week, the clashes continued.

At about 5 p.m. on Sunday, an American soldier was killed just north of the capital when the vehicle he was riding in was hit by a roadside bomb.

In Sadr City, witnesses said an American armored vehicle was blown up by a homemade bomb on Falah Street, in the center of the neighborhood.

Ali Khayon, who lives on the street, said that the blast occurred about 1:30. “The American soldiers opened fire randomly in a crazy way and shot many people,” he said. “I started taking the wounded people in my truck in order to move them to the hospital, and on the way I saw the American tank still burning.”

A police officer in Sadr City said a second armored vehicle that came to tow away the one that was bombed was hit by another explosion.

The American military released a statement late Sunday night saying that a mine-resistant armored vehicle on combat patrol “in eastern Baghdad” was struck by a homemade bomb on Sunday, and that a second bomb was discovered in the area. While soldiers tried to defuse the bomb, they came under mortar and small-arms fire.

An aircraft called in to support the soldiers killed 25 people, according to the statement.

American forces also conducted airstrikes in the New Baghdad neighborhood, just south of Sadr City, in Kadhimiya, in Ghazaliya in eastern Baghdad and in the northern part of the city, according to the American military. At least 21 people were killed.

An official at the Interior Ministry, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that 150 civilians had been killed and 350 wounded in the violence that has erupted in Baghdad over the past five days.

Ahmad Fadam, Mudhafer al-Husaini and Hosham Hussein contributed reporting from Baghdad, Qais Mizher from Basra, and employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Basra.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print