A delegation of Iraqis meant to help negotiate an end to the uprising in Najaf was forced on Tuesday to delay its mission to the holy city when it could not get a military escort for the dangerous journey.
The 60 mediators from Iraq’s National Conference had planned to leave early on Tuesday morning to meet radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and appeal to his followers to put down their arms and join Iraq’s political process. However, by early afternoon, they remained at the conference site in central Baghdad.
”The United States troops and Iraqi police refused to escort the delegation. They are afraid for its safety because they themselves are being targeted by militants,” said delegate Ahmad al Hayali.
The Interior Ministry said it had received no request to provide security for the delegation.
”We are prepared to provide all kinds of protection to the delegation from Baghdad to Najaf and back,” Interior Ministry spokesperson Sabah Kadhim said.
Blast kills seven in Baghdad
As the delegation waited, a mortar round hit a busy street several kilometres away, killing seven people and injuring 47 others, officials said.
The blast on al-Rasheed Street set one building on fire and damaged seven cars, said Colonel Adnan Abdul-Rahman, of the Interior Ministry.
It smashed the front of a barbershop, and blood mixed with shards of glass on the street. Firefighters were hosing down charred cars, their windshields smashed.
A United States soldier and a civilian security guard were also wounded when another mortar fell between the convention centre, where a key national conference began its last day, and the interim Iraqi government building, the military said.
The conference itself was considered a major target for militants waging a 16-month-old insurgency in the country, and an explosion, reportedly from a mortar, shook the area near the building on Tuesday.
Al-Sadr aide Ali al-Yassiry, who said he came to the conference to talk to United Nations officials about the Najaf violence, said he was slightly injured in the blast.
Al-Sadr’s followers have said they were boycotting the gathering, though several members of his movement have been seen there in recent days.
Najaf clashes escalate
Meanwhile, explosions and gunfire shook the streets of Najaf on Tuesday as the clashes escalated. US troops entered the flashpoint Old City neighbourhood, where al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia is based, and US tanks encircled the Old City.
The militants have been battling US troops from Najaf’s vast cemetery and revered Imam Ali Shrine since August 5, when a two-month-old ceasefire broke down.
The conference delegation to Najaf was bringing a peace plan that demands al-Sadr pull his men out of the shrine, where they have taken refuge, disband his militia and join in the country’s political process in exchange for amnesty for his fighters.
Al-Sadr aides said they welcomed the mission, but not the peace proposal.
”The demands of the [National Conference] committee are impossible. The shrine compound must be in the hands of the religious authorities. They are asking us to leave Najaf while we are the sons of Najaf,” said an al-Sadr aide, Sheik Ali Smeisim.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has also offered to play ”a facilitating role” to help end the violence if all sides agree, UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard said on Monday.
He said the decision came after Annan spoke to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Kamal Kharrazi and the new UN Iraq envoy, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.
Conference meant to be revolutionary
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 ceasefire talks broke down, has diverted the gathering.
Some delegates threatened to walk out in protest of the government’s effort to crack down on the militants, while others called for al-Sadr to abandon his uprising. Still others said the crisis only made the conference more relevant.
The conference was to vote on Tuesday on members of a national council that will serve as a watchdog over the interim government before elections expected in January. But the conference decided not to hold the vote until the delegation returns from Najaf.
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.
”[Najaf] has really affected progress,” said Ahmad al Hayali, one conference delegate.
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 Iraq.
If he refuses, the conflict will have done little more than distract attention from other pressing issues and damage conference organisers’ efforts to project an optimistic image of national unity.
”We hope he will accept it. This country has seen so much violence and so much bitterness, it’s time that we seek a way out,” said Barham Saleh, Deputy Prime Minister for National Security.
US troops have taken the lead in the Najaf fighting, while Iraqi security forces have played a minor role, mainly operating checkpoints. US troops are training Iraqi national guard units for any possible raid on the shrine compound.
”Security is the number-one concern of all Iraqis,” said conference delegate Radha Taki of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. ”And the main security problem these days is the escalation in Najaf.”
On Monday, Najaf’s police chief, Major General Ghalib al-Jazaari, said members of al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia broke into his family’s house in Basra, beat up his sisters and kidnapped his handicapped, 80-year-old father.
Iraq is scheduled to hold January elections to choose a transitional government. That government will convene a national convention to draft a Constitution for consideration by voters in October 2005. A vote for a constitutionally based government will follow two months later. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press reporters Sameer N Yacoub in Baghdad and Abdul Hussein al-Obeidi in Najaf contributed to this report.
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