Word: imam
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...shape post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed, the national conference called to create an interim legislature found its main business eclipsed by concern over the standoff, and responded with great relief to an announcement Wednesday that Sadr had purportedly agreed to heed government demands to put down their weapons, leave the Imam Ali Mosque and join the political process. But the delegates' relief may be premature: Sadr's spokesman made clear that he was going nowhere until U.S. and Iraqi government forces pulled back from around the shrine and a cease-fire was in force. And while the latest truce announcement looks...
...Although U.S. and Iraqi forces had planned to renew the offensive against Sadr's men in the Imam Ali Mosque after cease-fire talks broke down last Saturday, the government in Baghdad had once again jammed on the brakes. That was because it had become clear to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that a frontal assault would wreck the national conference designed to produce an interim legislature and imperil his prospects for achieving popular legitimacy. The Najaf issue eclipsed the conference's agenda and dominated discussions on Saturday and Sunday after hundreds of Shiite delegates angrily denounced the planned action...
...ordered by Allawi's government, its deputy president Ibrahim Jaafari called for a halt to the offensive, and there were scores of resignations of lower-level regional government officials in protest of the clashes in Najaf. The government rushed to assure Iraqis that American forces would not enter the Imam Ali Mosque, and any fighting there would be done by Iraqi security forces. The problem was, U.S. commanders had reportedly concluded that the Iraqi forces in the city had trouble achieving even "minor combat objectives...
...match for more than 3,000 U.S. troops and an undisclosed number of Iraqi personnel deployed there, the political circumstances in which the battle was waged forced the Marines to fight with one hand tied behind their backs: Sadr's men were holed up in and around the Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest shrine in the Shiite Muslim tradition, and any damage to the mosque could provoke a massive Shiite uprising that might imperil the entire project of remaking Iraq...
...fight began when the governor of Najaf sought to have his own security forces eject the Sadrists from the large cemetery adjacent to the Imam Ali shrine, which they'd occupied since a cease-fire was brokered in June. The governor charged that the Sadrist presence, and their stockpiling of weapons, violated the terms of the cease-fire; the Sadrists claimed it was the governor's men who were violating the cease-fire and responded by occupying police stations and taking hostages. As soon as the confrontation turned violent, the Iraqi security forces were forced to call in the Marines...