Word: truce
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...commanding American and Iraqi-government troops battling the stubborn gunmen of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army proclaimed his men were ready "to finish this fight that the Muqtada militia started." Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister of Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government, declared there would be "no negotiation or truce" with the Shi'ite rebels. As the battle unfolded amid the dusty vastness of the city's Valley of Peace cemetery adjacent to the shrine and U.S. Marines engaged in a tomb-to-tomb fight with black-clad Mahdi fighters, all the elements of Armageddon seemed to be converging...
...rebuffed. After his newspaper was shut down in late March and the Coalition Provisional Authority revealed that a warrant had been issued for his arrest on murder charges, he sent his fighters into the streets of Najaf and Sadr City for two months. He eventually accepted a favorable truce in June that relegated U.S. forces to bases outside the city and did nothing to rid the place of anti-American rebels. U.S. military commanders complained that the political deal simply gave him breathing room to rebuild his battered forces and consolidate himself as the chief Shi'ite resistance leader. There...
...Mahdi militia regarded the new forces as a rival gang on its turf. Two weeks ago, government security men arrested one of al-Sadr's closest aides in nearby Karbala, and the truce unraveled from there. Al-Sadr's militiamen then accused U.S. Marines, who have recently taken over responsibility for policing Najaf, of breaking the cease-fire's rules by moving into parts of the city that were supposed to be off limits to them. U.S. officials put the blame on the militia: in the early hours of Aug. 5, Mahdi fighters assaulted a police station with such ferocity...
...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 set to forestall, once again, a direct assault on his militia forces, it's far from clear that the promised disengagement will occur along the lines announced in Baghdad on Wednesday...
...fire in Najaf may be a telling measure of the political balance of forces in the new Iraq. Having launched an armored offensive into the Shiite holy city after vowing to destroy Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia, U.S. commanders abruptly called a halt to offensive operations on Friday as truce negotiations between Sadr and the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi continued. But a new truce wasn't exactly what Allawi and the Americans had in mind when they vowed earlier in the week to finish the fight and break the back of Sadr's forces. The new pause...