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Tension Eases in Two Iraqi Flashpoint Cities

Apr-20-2004 » Filed Under: Iraq News

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By Alistair Lyon

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Tension eased in two Iraqi flashpoint cities Tuesday as a truce held in the Sunni bastion of Falluja and U.S. forces prepared to pull back from a base near Najaf, where a rebel Shi'ite cleric is holed up. [...]

U.S. forces also gave Iraqi mediators more time to resolve a standoff with Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia in the holy city of Najaf, south of the capital.

General Ricardo Sanchez, commanding U.S. forces in Iraq, told soldiers of a 2,500-strong 3rd Brigade Task Force that he was pulling them back to avoid bloodshed in Najaf or damage to shrines sacred to Shi'ites in Iraq and beyond.

"The problem of Sadr is bigger than Sadr. It is the whole Shi'ite community and the holy shrine," Sanchez said as troops prepared to leave a base, 20 km (13 miles) northwest of Najaf.

"We have just about eliminated all his (Sadr's) influence across the south," he said, saying the cleric still had a limited presence in the towns of Diwaniya and Kerbala.

"The real center of mess is right here," Sanchez said. "The problem is that if we launch you into the city of Najaf and we get you into a major firefight...and if we get into destroying the holy shrines it will create a backlash."

Sanchez said there were "a whole bunch of initiatives" to resolve the crisis, but made clear Sadr was still a target. "Wherever we find him on the battlefield we kill him within the constraints that we have applied," he said.


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