Source:
ReutersMANAMA, April 21 (Reuters) - The Iraqi government will not allow Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to wage an "open war" in Iraq and will move to curb his militia, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Monday.
Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia has battled U.S. and Iraqi government forces, threatened on Saturday to launch an "open war until liberation" against the U.S.-backed government if it continued a month-old crackdown on his followers.
The threat was followed by what the U.S. military called the heaviest fighting for weeks in his east Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City.
"Of course nobody will accept open warfare in Iraq or allow the rule of militias to be established," Zebari told Reuters in Bahrain.
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U.S., Iran agree: al-Sadr's outBy James Glanz and Alissa J. Rubin
BAGHDAD — In the Iraqi government's fight to subdue the Shiite militia of Muqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra, perhaps nothing reveals the complexities of the Iraq conflict more starkly than this: Iran and the United States find themselves on the same side.
The causes of this convergence boil down to the logic of self-interest, although it is logic in a place where even the most basic reasoning refuses to proceed in a straight line. In essence, though, the calculation by the United States is that it must back the government it helped to create and take the steps needed to protect U.S. troops and civilian officials.
Iranian motivations appear to hinge on the possibility that al-Sadr's political and military followers could gain power in provincial elections, now scheduled for this fall, and disrupt the creation of a large semi-autonomous region in southern Iraq that the Iranians see as beneficial.
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But both sides are adamant on the issue of countering al-Sadr, one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite clerics. As Iraqi government soldiers took control of the last areas of Basra from al-Sadr's militia on Saturday, concluding a monthlong effort, Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, took the unusual step of expressing strong support for the government's position and described al-Sadr's fighters as outlaws. When it comes to which Shiite Iran and the United States want to see in power, at least for now they largely see al-Sadr's ascendance as a common threat — but nowhere more so than in Basra, the oil-rich capital of Iraq's most populous region, the Shiite south.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2004362583_iraniraq21.html?syndication=rss