IRAQ: Iraq's rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will field candidates in the country's first elections, campaigning on a platform calling for the withdrawal of US forces after moving away from violent opposition to their presence, a top aide said yesterday.
The details came after Sadr aides said on Monday that the cleric had ordered his Mehdi militia to end attacks on US and Iraqi government forces and would soon unveil plans to pursue his goals through politics rather than conflict.
The move constitutes a reversal of tactics for the Shi'ite cleric, whose "no democracy under occupation" stand has won him support among nationalist clerics and a generation of poor Shi'ites who have remained distrustful of Iraq's political system since Saddam Hussein was toppled.
"The full political programme will be unveiled soon. The Sadr movement has academic elements and experts who will be coming more to the forefront and support its role in a free, independent, democratic Iraq," Sadr's political aide Ali al-Yassiri said.
The Sadr Martyr movement, named after Sadr's late father and uncle, who were killed after opposing Saddam, will transform itself into a more efficient political machine by elections in January and stop attacking US forces, he said.
"The direction is to work politically on the pull-out of US occupation forces as soon as possible," Yassiri said.
"We have declared a unilateral ceasefire," said Yassiri, adding that the movement's manifesto would include speedier reconstruction that includes Sadr's power base in Iraq's shanty towns and alliances with other anti-US forces.
The movement includes the Mehdi Army militia.
Iranian-born Shi'ite cleric Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful ayatollah, pressured Sadr into agreeing to support elections as part of a deal last week that ended three weeks of fighting in Najaf, a centre of Shi'ite Islam. Hundreds of Iraqis were killed.
The young cleric has been critical of the post-war political system, saying the government and the United States engineered a way to exclude nationalist and anti-US forces.
But even politicians sympathetic to Sadr have criticised the 30-year-old cleric for lacking a comprehensive programme and for an inner circle that excluded more educated and qualified members of the movement.
"Moqtada al-Sadr has always had no problem even if a non-Muslim was to become the president of Iraq as long as he was just and the process was fair," Yassiri said. "Justice constitutes the basis of our movement and of Islamic political thought. Saddam Hussein professed Islam but he was a criminal." - (Reuters)