Rebel cleric turns to political fight

Rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to end their uprising against US and Iraqi forces while he considers forming a political movement, senior al-Sadr officials said.

Al-Sadr has backed off other commitments in the past, but a truce would be a major victory for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi by removing a serious insurgency and potentially bringing many of the Shiite cleric’s followers into the effort to build a peaceful democracy.

The announcement came amid conflicting reports on Iraq’s vital oil exports.

Iraqi oil officials and the governor of Basra state said exports were shut down after a rash of pipeline attacks. However, world oil prices decreased as traders said other reports suggested some oil was still flowing. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, October contracts for light sweet crude fell 90 cents a barrel to US$42.28 – well below peaks above US$48 a barrel in mid-August.

Sheik Ali Smeisim, a political adviser to al-Sadr, announced the cease-fire decision in Najaf, calling on the cleric’s Mahdi Army militiamen to “stop firing until the announcement of the political programme adopted by the Sadrist movement".

He also urged US and Iraqi troops to move out of the centre of Iraqi cities, although that did not appear to be a condition for the unilateral cease-fire.

Al-Sadr had posed the biggest challenge yet to Allawi’s government, with three weeks of heavy fighting in Najaf threatening to enflame Iraqi Shiites by endangering the revered Imam Ali Shrine.

A peace deal mediated by Iraq’s top Shiite religious leader ended the fighting in Najaf last week, but clashes have continued elsewhere. Al-Sadr’s aides and Iraqi government officials met in Baghdad yesterday to try to negotiate an end to violence that has wracked the capital’s Sadr City slum.

The government has repeatedly called on al-Sadr to disband the Mahdi Army and join politics. His aides did not say whether he was considering dissolving the militia, but for the first time they said he was preparing to enter politics.

“This latest initiative shows that we want stability and security in this country by ending all confrontation in all parts of Iraq,” said Sheik Raed al-Khadami, an al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad. “Al-Sadr’s office in Najaf will issue a call within the next two days to join the political process.”