Sadr urges end to attacks on Spanish troops, mediation efforts resume Mon Apr 19,12:04 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - A radical Shiite cleric urged his followers to stop attacking Spanish troops after Madrid announced their upcoming withdrawal from Iraq (news - web sites), as mediation efforts resumed to settle the Sunni and Shiite Muslim rebellions.
But in a sign of the worsening insurgency in Iraq, US overseer Paul Bremer warned that Iraqi security forces would not be able to operate on their own after the scheduled June 30 restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.
And a mortar round hit the Swedish embassy grounds in Baghdad Monday, causing no casualties, police said. It was not clear whether the embassy was the target as the Iraqi agriculture ministry and an evangelical church are located nearby.
No Swedes were working at the embassy, located in central Baghdad, the Swedish foreign ministry in Stockholm said.
In the holy city of Najaf, Qais al-Khazaali, a spokesman for firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr, said, "We call (on Sadr's followers) to ensure the security of Spanish troops until their departure as long as these forces do not perpetrate aggressions against the Iraqi people."
"Other countries which assign troops to the coalition in Iraq are urged to follow the example of Spain and to withdraw their forces to save the lives of their soldiers," he added.
A senior US-led coalition spokesman played down the impact of Spain's decision to pull its 1,300 troops out of Iraq as soon as possible.
"The Spaniards have done a wonderful job," the spokesman said. "On the military point of view, it's not a large problem. We certainly have sufficient capabilities and we'll certainly have more countries coming."
"Spanish troops in Iraq will be withdrawn as soon as possible and with maximum security," Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in a nationally televised broadcast, a day after taking office.
"This is a positive development," Muthanna al-Dahri, a spokesman for the Association of Sunni Muslim scholars, said of the Spanish decision.
Zapatero had originally said the withdrawal would go ahead unless there was a UN Security Council mandate for an international force in Iraq before the June 30 transfer of power to an interim government.
But Sunday, he said a UN resolution was unlikely to "match the content" of the Spanish demands for the continued presence of the troops.
Sadr also indicated through his spokesman that he favored the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in Iraq "on condition that it be made up of Muslim countries or countries which did not join the occupation of Iraq such as Russia, France or Germany."
Khazaali said the UN force must let the Iraqi people ensure their own protection by entrusting law and order duties to the Iraqi security forces, notably the police.
Until now Sadr had rejected any role for the UN in Iraq, arguing that the world body was under the sway of occupation forces.
Bremer for his part warned that "If former members of the Republican Guards, the mukharabbat (ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s now disbanded intelligence service), the Fedayeen Saddam and the Moqtadas militia are to be prevented from shooting their way into power, Iraqi security forces must have help until they are fully equipped and trained.
"This is what the Coalition intends to do," he said in a statement issued by the coalition.
"But it is clear that Iraqi forces will not be able, on their own, to deal with these threats by June 30 when an Iraqi government assumes sovereignty. Instead, Iraq and troops from many countries, including the United States will be partners in providing the security Iraqis need."
An upsurge in violence this month sparked by twin insurgencies from Sunni and Shiite militants has left more than 90 US soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis dead.
In the flashpoint Sunni bastion of Fallujah west of here, Iraqi mediators were to arrange another meeting between local civic leaders and coalition officials to consolidate an uneasy ceasefire in the city which has been under a US marine siege for two weeks.
"The goal is to reach a global ceasefire and a return to normal in the city," said Fuad Rawi, a leader of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party which is involved in the mediation.
More than 600 Iraqis, half of them women, children and elderly people, have been killed in the fighting, according to hospital officials. But the US military says it is impossible to verify the figure.
There were also signs of movement in efforts to resolve the coalition's standoff with Sadr in central Iraq peacefully.
The Shiite Dawa party said Sunday its representatives held a "positive" meeting with the coalition.
"We met Bremer. We feel that this contact was positive and that the coalition is prepared to resolve the crisis peacefully," said Adnan Ali al-Kazem, an aide to Dawa party chief Ibrahim Jaafari.
He said Dawa planned to meet with Sadr Monday to discuss how to revive the negotiations.
And the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said Sunday he did not believe it was necessary for coalition forces to enter Najaf.
"Why do it if you don't have to?" Myers said on CNN television, asked if the troops outside the city would go in.
He said of Sadr: "He's in Najaf" and "right now he has been so marginalized, there's not a city under control of his militia."
Coalition forces want Sadr on charges related to the murder of a rival cleric last year, and insist he disband his Mehdi Army militia.
Both Sadr and a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, warned coalition troops against entering the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, calling them "red lines."