Iraq: Al-Sadr accepts Najaf peace plan

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr accepted a peace plan yesterday to end the fighting in Najaf that would disarm his militia and remove them from their hideout in a holy shrine.

If the agreement is fulfilled – and al-Sadr has made contradictory statements in the past – it would resolve a crisis that had angered many of Iraq’s majority Shiites and threatened to undermine the fledgling interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which is already fighting a persistent Sunni insurgency.

Al-Sadr’s loyalists and a combined US-Iraqi force have been fighting for nearly two weeks throughout the holy city, battling in Najaf’s vast graveyard and in the streets of its Old City.

A wall surrounding the Imam Ali Shrine, where the militants have holed up, was reportedly chipped in the fighting, and any damage to the gold-domed mosque itself would infuriate the world’s 120 million Shiite Muslims.

The drawn-out fighting, which had spread to other Shiite areas, further burnished al-Sadr’s reputation among poor, grassroots Shiites at the expense of more senior – and more moderate – clerics and hampered efforts to quell the Sunni insurgency.

Yesterday afternoon, Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan said the government could send Iraqi forces to raid the shrine by the end of the day.

Hours later, al-Sadr’s office sent a message to the National Conference in Baghdad, saying he would accept the gathering’s peace proposal, which demands his militia drop its arms, withdraw from the shrine and transform itself into a political party in exchange for amnesty.

The government welcomed the move, but the Bush administration reacted cautiously.

“I don’t think we can trust al-Sadr,” said Condoleezza Rice, President George Bush’s national security adviser. ”We have seen many, many times al-Sadr assume or say he is going to accept certain terms and then it turns out not to be the case.”

Al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany said US forces must stop attacking before the plan could be implemented.

The fighting in Najaf killed eight people and wounded 27 others yesterday, Hussein Hadi of Najaf General Hospital said.

The US military says the clashes have killed hundreds of militants, though the militants deny that. Eight US soldiers and at least 40 Iraqi police have been killed as well.

Also yesterday, one US soldier was shot and killed during an attack on troops patrolling Baghdad, and two Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were also killed.

One Marine was killed while conducting “security and stability operations” in the volatile Anbar province, and the other was killed in a vehicle accident.

As of Tuesday, 943 US service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the U.S. Defence Department.

Near Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, seven coalition soldiers were injured during a mortar attack on their camp, the military said. The wounded included two Polish soldiers and five civilians – one American, one Pole and three Iraqis.

In the northern city of Mosul, a mortar round slammed into a busy market yesterday, killing five civilians and wounding 21.

The violence in Najaf had threatened to overshadow the National Conference, a gathering of more than 1,000 prominent Iraqis seen as an important milestone on the country’s path to democracy.

The conference spilled into an unscheduled fourth day yesterday so it could choose members of an interim National Council, which is to act as a watchdog over the interim government until elections in January.