Iraqi Leaders in Najaf Reach Deal in Effort to Resolve Crisis

Iraqi religious and political leaders in Najaf agreed late Tuesday on how to end the crisis gripping the city, while a U.S. general said he might recruit Shiite Muslim militiamen now fighting U.S. soldiers for a security force there.

The accord was hammered out between about three dozen moderates and emissaries of Muqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric whose Al Mahdi army seized control of Najaf and other towns last month. Sadr’s militiamen have been fighting U.S. forces in and around the Shiite holy city.

Under the agreement, Sadr’s outlawed militia would become a legitimate political organization, participants said. A criminal case against Sadr would be postponed until after June 30, when the U.S.-led coalition is scheduled to turn over sovereignty to an Iraqi caretaker government. Sadr is wanted in connection with the slaying of a rival cleric in Najaf last year.

The deal is to be submitted today to Najaf’s religious leadership for approval, participants said.

“This is the way to solve this crisis, which is threatening everybody,” Qais Khazaali, Sadr’s chief aide in Najaf, said after a meeting held in the shrine of Imam Ali.

What U.S. officials think of the agreement remains to be seen. Military commanders have stressed that they want to peacefully resolve the crisis that has gripped Najaf since Sadr’s black-clad forces took over and U.S. forces moved south from Baghdad to confront them.

The U.S. Army commander whose troops are facing off with Sadr’s militiamen announced Tuesday that he might recruit those same insurgents for an Iraqi civil defense force he plans to build in Najaf.

“I’m not against identifying some of those young men to become part of a legitimate Iraqi security force,” Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters in Baghdad. “This is their holy city.”

The general said that without an agreement, he worried that Sadr might blow up the Imam Ali shrine, among Shiites’ holiest sites, and blame the destruction on the Americans. “I would expect him to try to cause some catastrophic event in the history of Shia Islam and blame us for it,” said Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, which has about 2,500 troops in and around Najaf.

The general’s plan is similar to the blueprint agreed to by Marines last month to defuse a military standoff in the insurgent stronghold of Fallouja, a largely Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad. There, further violence was avoided when Marines withdrew and agreed to turn over security to a new force, the Fallouja Brigade, led by former officers of Saddam Hussein’s military.

Under the Najaf proposal, Dempsey said, U.S. troops would train the new unit and integrate it into the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a nationwide military force set up by the U.S. Army.

For the last two weeks, he said, commanders have recruited fighters recommended by local leaders. Some in the Sadr militia “are probably decent young men who have been badly led astray,” Dempsey said.

Pressure has been mounting from within the Shiite community for Sadr to leave Najaf, where he is not especially popular and has long been at odds with the Shiite religious establishment. Residents have complained that the lucrative flow of pilgrims to Najaf has almost ceased since Sadr’s forces took control.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people marched through the streets of Najaf, calling on Sadr to leave. It was the second day of such demonstrations, and a major march is planned for Friday, the Muslim day of rest.

Word of several deals that would end the armed standoff in Najaf had been circulating for days. The new, U.S.-appointed governor of Najaf said Tuesday that he would ask occupation authorities to defer acting on murder charges against Sadr until after sovereignty is restored to Iraq, the Associated Press reported.

At Tuesday’s media briefing, Dempsey acknowledged that U.S. forces should have moved more quickly to detain or arrest Sadr last year, before he consolidated his militia.

“He was training troops, gaining resources and stockpiling weapons,” Dempsey said. “We probably gave him six months more than he should have had.”

Occupation authorities have for weeks attempted to approach Sadr through moderate Shiites in Najaf in an effort to avert a showdown. The military strategy marks a change from the Army’s harsh language last month, when officials declared troops sought to “kill or capture” Sadr.

From Iran, Ayatollah Kazem Haeri, Sadr’s spiritual mentor, issued a statement calling Sadr’s demands “legitimate” and said he is acting “courageously and wisely.” In a statement, Sadr called on fellow Shiites to form a united front against the U.S.-led occupation.

Clashes between U.S. troops and Al Mahdi militiamen have continued, but mostly on the outskirts of the city as the U.S. avoided the shrines in Najaf and in the nearby city of Kufa. On Monday evening, a U.S. official said, U.S. forces killed 13 militiamen in a confrontation in palm groves east of Kufa.

Witnesses in the city of Karbala said U.S. soldiers battled Sadr loyalists Tuesday near the Mukhaiyam mosque, Associated Press reported. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Meanwhile, gunmen south of Baghdad killed one Russian engineer and kidnapped two others, prompting Moscow to urge hundreds of Russian workers to leave, according to news service reports from Moscow.

The Russians were described as employees of a company working on a power plant project south of Baghdad.

Farther west, insurgents attacked a civilian supply convoy on the road between Baghdad and Jordan, and some people were unaccounted for, a U.S. official said. The 21-vehicle convoy was operated by a subsidiary or subcontractor of KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co.

The convoy was probably ferrying goods to a U.S. military base, an official said, but there were no U.S. soldiers accompanying it. A number of vehicles were destroyed.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, a bomb exploded in a crowded market, killing four Iraqis and injuring 23, AP reported.

Morin, McDonnell and Salar Jaff reported from Baghdad. Raheem Salman and Saad Sadiq of The Times’ Baghdad Bureau contributed from Najaf.

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In other stories this year, Sadr spokesman Qais Khazaali is correctly referred to as Qais Khazali.

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