BAGHDAD, 29 August 2004 — Iraq’s top Shiite authority yesterday said peaceful options for resisting US-led presence in the country were not exhausted yet. The announcement was made after a meeting at the house of Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini Al-Sistani in Najaf.
The meeting of the group known as the Marjaiya came a day after armed followers of Moqtada Sadr vacated the Imam Ali Mosque.
“A main concern of the Marjaiya since the beginning has been for the government and the police to take control of the city and establish the rule of law,” a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Bashir Al-Najafi said.
“We are not out of peaceful solutions yet to end the occupation. But when we are, no more words will be spoken, and armed struggle will become a possibility,” warned spokesman Sheikh Ali Najafi.
Grand Ayatollahs Mohammed Saad Al-Hakim and Ishaq Al-Fayad met Sistani, who rushed back to Iraq on Wednesday from three weeks of medical treatment in London to force a peace deal when fighting in Najaf threatened the mosque. Najafi, the fourth cleric in the Marjaiya quartet, arrived later for a separate audience with Sistani.
A team of Iraqi ministers visited Najaf yesterday and discussed plans for rebuilding the city. The five ministers drove through a shattered urban landscape, inspected the Imam Ali Mosque and held talks with Sistani.
“We have come to Najaf to consolidate the peace settlement we reached and to congratulate Sistani,” Minister of State Kasim Daoud, who led the delegation, said.
Violence continued elsewhere. US warplanes and tanks bombarded targets in Fallujah and US forces exchanged gunfire with fighters on the city’s eastern outskirts.
On Friday, US airstrikes targeted the same neighborhoods, killing three people and wounding 13 others.
In Baquba, six Iraqi policemen were shot dead and 11 people wounded when gunmen traveling in two minibuses opened fire on a checkpoint, medics said. Police manning the checkpoint came under a hail of bullets, before the gunmen took flight.
Late yesterday, Arabic television station Al-Jazeera said an Iraqi militant group had kidnapped two Frenchmen and given the French government 48 hours to end a ban on Muslim headscarves.
— Additional input from agencies
