Sadr bids a farewell to arms but fighting on streets of Najaf tells a different story
By Donald Macintyre in Najaf
19 August 2004
Fighting continued in Najaf late last night despite an earlier declaration that the Shia leader Muqtada Sadr had accepted a peace plan designed to end the two-week battle for control of the city.
In an unexpected development, Sadr sent a letter to a delegate attending the national conference of politicians in Baghdad saying that he was accepting peace terms laid down the previous day by a mission from the conference.
But amid serious doubts over whether his conditions for implementing the plan reportedly including a demand that US troops should withdraw would satisfy the interim Iraqi government, explosions continued around the old city. Police imposed a curfew for the first time. Shelling and automatic gunfire had earlier been clearly audible from points close to the old city after reports spread of the putative truce and at least one mortar was fired in the direction of a main police station.
Earlier, yesterday the armed insurgents occupying the mosque in Najaf, which contains the sacred Imam Ali shrine, were given "the next few hours" to lay down their arms or face a major assault that would "teach them a lesson they will never forget".
Rumours of a breakthrough began circulating among Iraqi delegates to the conference choosing a national assembly in Baghdad. The meeting was then read a letter from Sadr. It said he had agreed to the demands laid down in a peace plan taken to Najaf by a delegation from the conference which the cleric had refused to meet on Tuesday. The plan calls on Sadr to leave the mosque, disarm his militia and transform his Mehdi Army into a political party in exchange for amnesty.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=552887