Word: sistani
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...chose to deal instead of fight, this time accepting a truce with the Shi'ite militia loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 30. The U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division agreed to pull back from the holy city of Najaf in a deal pushed by Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, the most respected Shi'ite leader in the country...
Whether the truce can stick is critical for the Administration and the viability of the interim government. The U.S. has desperately tried to accommodate Ayatullah Sistani--the symbol of what senior Bush advisers see as the Shi'ite silent majority, a group they believe is impatient with the occupation but willing to support a sovereign government if it is seen as legitimate. Reducing the violence in the Sunni triangle and the south will, Administration officials hope, buttress their case that it's safe for the U.N. to throw its support behind the new government. A senior Administration official told TIME...
...which hopes to maintain influence over Iraq's future through its ties to the new body's most powerful executive. The CIA has long backed him over his voluble rival, Ahmad Chalabi, to whom Allawi is related by marriage. A Brahimi aide claims that Allawi's appointment also received Sistani's blessing, which the U.S. hopes may earn him some quick credibility. But some Iraqi leaders say Allawi's ties to U.S. intelligence and the widely unpopular Governing Council will undermine him. Says Sheikh Mohammed Basher al-Faidi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, a powerful group of Sunni...
...most popular leader in Iraq, according to the ICRSS survey, was the country's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Also high up: Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a leader of the Shiite Dawa party named as one of two vice-presidents in the new administration, and Adnan Pachachi, the Sunni elder statesman and preferred presidential candidate of the U.S. who was offered the post but turned it down in the face of objections from some the Iraqi Governing Council...
...agreement," says Sheik Faad al-Turfi. "They came here as occupiers. They kill Iraqis, rape our women and steal our riches." With an air of exhaustion, he also dismisses the claims of al-Sadr's Shi'ite critics, like Sheik Bhafer al-Qaisi, a representative of Ayatullah Sistani's who told TIME last week that al-Sadr was purposely trying to provoke an attack on the Shi'ite shrines to trigger a nationwide revolt. "We want to defend the shrines," says al-Turfi, "not destroy them...