Showdown dominates Iraq talks

The deadly showdown between US troops and Iraqi militants in Najaf dominated Iraq’s national conference, with tribal and religious leaders deciding to send 60 delegates to the holy city to persuade a radical Shiite cleric to call off his fighters.

Aides to Muqtada al-Sadr said the cleric, whose loyalists have been battling the Americans from Najaf’s vast cemetery and revered Imam Ali Shrine since August 5, awaited the delegates’ arrival today.

Al-Sadr’s supporters said they welcomed the move. “We are ready to accept any mediation for a peaceful solution,” Ahmed al-Shaibany said in Najaf.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has offered to play “a facilitating role” to help end the violence if all sides agree, UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard said yesterday.

He said the decision came after Annan spoke to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, and his new Iraq envoy Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.

The three-day National Conference in Baghdad was supposed to be a revolutionary moment in Iraq’s democratic transformation post-Saddam Hussein, an unprecedented gathering of 1,300 Iraqis from all ethnic and religious groups for vigorous debate over their country’s course.

It also was intended to increase the legitimacy of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s government, which is deeply dependent on American troops and money even after the official US occupation ended.

But the violence in Najaf, which resumed on Sunday after cease-fire talks broke down, has diverted the gathering.

US tanks rolled into the Old City of Najaf to within 500 yards of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrine yesterday, witnesses said. Explosions also rocked the cemetery.

Late yesterday, Iraqis at the conference agreed to send a delegation to meet with al-Sadr, who has vowed to fight ”until the last drop of my blood has been spilled.”

If al-Sadr agrees to stand down, the conference will have succeeded in turning a crisis that threatened to torpedo the gathering into a startling, symbolic victory showing the potential power of communal solutions in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Violence persisted throughout Iraq yesterday.

In Baqouba, two civilians were killed and four others were wounded when a mortar hit their house, said Ali Hussein, a medic at the city’s main hospital.

Attackers ambushed a US tank and set it on fire in Sadr City, a Baghdad slum and al-Sadr stronghold, the army said. The crew escaped with minor injuries.

The conference’s main task was to help form a 100-member national council that will serve as a watchdog over the interim government before elections expected in January.

The conference also was meant to discuss reconstruction efforts, a persistent Sunni uprising and other key issues while reassuring the public that all groups will have a voice in the new Iraq.

Some delegates saw the Najaf crisis as fortuitous and hoped to use the peace mission to show the Iraqi people that the gathering was not only legitimate but relevant.

As the conference started, some delegates threatened to walk out over Najaf as others angrily condemned the government’s actions there.

The conference already has had some successes.

Some of al-Sadr’s followers, who said they were boycotting, attended for the first time yesterday, said Hamid al-Khafaie, a spokesman for the former Governing Council.

:: Meanwhile, Iraq’s interim president pledged that Baghdad’s new government would crack down on separatist Kurdish rebels waging attacks today from mountain bases in northern Iraq.

Kurdish rebels fighting for autonomy have stepped up attacks in Turkey, officials said, including bombings last week at two small hotels and at a liquefied petroleum gas plant in Istanbul that killed two people and wounded 11 others.

Turkey repeatedly has urged US and Iraqi authorities to crack down on the rebels, and yesterday, Iraq’s interim President Ghazi al-Yawer assured Turkey’s president that Baghdad would take action.

In an apparent attempt to avert a possible cross-border military campaign by Ankara, the Iraqi leader added that ”good neighbourly relations mean not mingling into the internal affairs of the other”.

Al-Yawer was in Turkey for two days, mainly to discuss security and trade, a visit that came amid a surge of kidnappings of foreigners, including Turkish truck drivers taken hostage this week, in Iraq.

But Turkey has pressed the issue of the Kurdish rebels, who have demanded autonomy for Turkey’s 12 million Kurds during a decades-long war that has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984.