IRAN: Iraq's top Shia religious leader has criticised US plans for the transfer of power to Iraqis as incomplete and paying too little heed to Islam, a leading Shia politician said yesterday.
Resistance from the cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, could lead to rejection by many of the Shia Muslims who make up 60 per cent of Iraq's population. But Ayatollah Sistani appeared to have stopped short of any outright dismissal of the programme.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking hours after guerrillas fired rockets at the Baghdad coalition compound where he was staying, said the plans for transfer of power by July 2004 and polls by the end of 2005 would only improve security.
As US forces keep up the search for deposed president Saddam Hussein, the US military said it had detained one of his former bodyguards, Brig Gen Khalid Arak Hatimy, in a raid on a house near the town of Ramadi.
In a separate raid in Samarra, troops detained a wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the second most-wanted man in Iraq, who has been accused of co-ordinating anti-US attacks.
Maj Gen Raymond Odierno, head of the 4th Infantry Division based in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, said he believed the fugitive dictator was still in Iraq, and the capture of Ibrahim's relatives could help track down fugitives.
Washington has put a $10 million price on Ibrahim's head. A $25 million bounty has been offered for Saddam.
Gen Odierno said US troops would keep Saddam on the run.
"My guess is he probably has a plan to keep himself nice and cosy during winter, while the rest of his people suffer," he said. "But we're going to try to keep him running so he can't be comfortable", the general said.
In the holy city of Najaf, Abdul-Aziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said Ayatollah Sistani, widely revered as Iraq's most influential Shia leader, believed the new US-backed roadmap was flawed.
Mr Hakim told a news conference he had met Ayatollah Sistani, who rarely makes public pronouncements on politics, to discuss the plan.
"He didn't find anything that assures Islamic identity," he said. "There should have been a stipulation which prevents legislating anything that contradicts Islam in the new Iraq." Mr Hakim is a member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and SCIRI has co-operated with the occupying powers in Iraq, drawing criticism from some Shias. He said Ayatollah Sistani had several misgivings about the US political timetable.
"He expressed concern about real gaps, which must be dealt with or the plan will lack the ability to meet the hopes of the Iraqi people. It diminishes the role of the Iraqi people in the process of transferring authority to Iraqis," Mr Hakim said.
He said Ayatollah Sistani also did not see any reason why elections should be delayed until 2005.
Mr Straw acknowledged security conditions remained difficult in Iraq, where insurgents have killed 184 US soldiers since Washington declared major combat over on May 1st, according to the latest Pentagon toll.
"I'm absolutely sure that a more rapid political process will assist the security situation," he told a news conference.
Mr Straw said he had not been aware of the attack on the compound where he was staying, which set sirens wailing.
In October, guerrillas rocketed a strongly fortified hotel inside the compound where US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying. One US soldier was killed.
A spokesman for the US 1st Armoured Division said at least two rockets had been fired in Tuesday's attack in Baghdad, but caused no casualties. Two Iraqi police were wounded in a separate rocket-propelled grenade attack.