A delegation from Iraq’s first national conference will on Tuesday travel to the holy city of Najaf in a bold attempt to broker a peace deal with the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The group of Iraqi politicians will set off from Baghdad in a fleet of minibuses, pursuing an initiative first suggested by a distant relative of the cleric, Sayed Hussain al-Sadr.
The move came after the Najaf fighting dominated a meeting in the Iraqi capital where 1 300 political and religious leaders had gathered to agree a new assembly to oversee Iraq’s interim government.
In Najaf itself, the fighting between al-Sadr’s Mehdi army and United States and Iraqi government forces appeared to have eased off.
There were skirmishes near the Imam Ali mosque, where al-Sadr’s supporters are dug in, and in the nearby cemetery.
Tuesday’s proposal came after Hussein al-Sadr, an ally of the US, appealed for an end to the 12-day uprising in Najaf, which has plunged Iraq’s interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, into his worst crisis so far, damaging his authority.
”We will deliver this urgent call from the national conference to Moqtada al-Sadr to try to solve this problem at its roots,” Hussein al-Sadr, a political opponent of the cleric, said on the sidelines of the three-day meeting.
The delegation would urge Moqtada al-Sadr to leave the Imam Ali shrine and it would also ask him to convert his Mehdi army into a peaceful political party, he said.
As part of the deal Moqtada al-Sadr’s supporters would be granted an amnesty by the Iraqi courts. No militia could be allowed to operate in Iraq outside the rule of law, Hussein al-Sadr added.
”This is an urgent call to Moqtada. I regard it as a holy mission. The holy shrine in Najaf is not the property of one person but belongs to the Iraqi people,” he said.
Last night Said Adnan al-Saafi, Moqtada al-Sadr’s press spokesperson, said that the cleric welcomed the talks and wanted a ”peaceful solution” to the crisis.
But he said the cleric was ”not optimistic” these latest negotiations would succeed following the collapse of talks with Iraq’s interim government over the weekend.
”He welcomes the delegation obviously and we hope and pray that this critical situation can be resolved,” Saafi said. ”But if the government uses the same tactics as last time we can’t be optimistic.”
Other Iraqi politicians welcomed the new talks. They also hinted that this was Moqtada al-Sadr’s last chance.
”He will see sense and accept the deal,” the interim deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, said.
”The situation around the holy shrine cannot be allowed to continue. This is a vital mission. We have to stop the bloodshed and move on,” Fawzi Hamzsa, who is likely to lead today’s delegation to Najaf, added.
Al-Sadr’s militia has previously called for the US military to withdraw, for the city to be placed under the control of religious clerics, for the release of militia prisoners, and for permission for his movement to take part in next year’s general elections.
According to Iraqi government sources, al-Sadr will be offered the chance to convert his movement into any kind of political party he wants — and to choose its ”name and structure”. The UN’s special envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, meanwhile, told the BBC he was also willing to mediate in the crisis.
Tuesday’s initiative came amid further violence in Iraq and the kidnapping of another western journalist, this time in the southern city of Nasiriya.
Micah Jaren, a French journalist with an American passport, was seized while walking through the market with his Iraqi translator, the TV station al-Jazeera reported.
The translator’s family reported the two missing, Adnan al-Shoraify, the deputy governor of Dhi Qar province, which includes the city, said Jaren was apparently on assignment in Iraq for an American archaeology magazine.
In other violence, two civilians were killed and four injured in Baquba when a mortar hit their house. It was not known who fired the mortar but insurgents often clash with US troops in the city.
A roadside bomb in Baquba also wounded three members of the Iraqi National Guard, said Zuhair Abdul-Kareem, a guardsman who was injured in the blast. – Guardian Unlimited Â