NAJAF, Iraq, 21 December 2006 — US-led forces handed over security control of Najaf province, whose capital is seat of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, to Iraq yesterday, calling it a major step forward in strengthening the government.

Iraqi authorities imposed a vehicle ban in Najaf, where the handover ceremony took place in a football stadium amid tight security. Najaf is the third of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be transferred to Iraqi security forces.

“It is a major step forward in improving security and strengthening the authority of the government,” US Maj. Gen. Kurt Cichowski, who oversaw the transfer of authority, told assembled Iraqi religious and political leaders and soldiers and policemen sitting in the stands. To guard against a possible attack by insurgents, officials ordered vehicles off the city’s streets and put police on every street corner.

While Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki has pressed for a speedy handover, a recent UN report said the Iraqi police and army were deeply infiltrated by militias and other armed groups. With a few major exceptions, Najaf, home to Iraq’s most senior religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, has been spared much of the violence rocking Baghdad and other areas where Shiites, Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds live side by side.

But it has not been immune to conflict between Shiite factions. Its status as a historic center of Shiite scholarship, and consequently political influence, means it will be especially important for the handover to succeed.

Najaf was the scene of a bloody three-week uprising by the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr, against US forces in August 2004. Today the Mehdi Army is one of several Shiite factions jostling for influence in the city.

A report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned Tuesday of tensions between the Mehdi Army and the Badr Brigades, a militia loyal to the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

“Both Shiite paramilitary groups are engaged in a dangerous tug-of-war over the city of Najaf,” the report said. Naval Lt. Michael Marley, a spokesman for the US- led multinational force handing over control, said all but a handful of the US and other troops in the province had pulled back in September and Iraqis were already effectively in charge.

Hikma Habib, a 27-year-old policeman in Najaf, was skeptical of the handover, saying previous ceremonies handing over smaller areas of control had made little difference.

“One time I raised the Iraqi flag and we had a ceremony with the governor of Najaf present ... and now they are handing over security again,” Habib said. “I don’t think this will be the last time, because the US forces, when they want to arrest somebody, they take back control of security, and after the arrest they hand it back again to the Iraqis. It’s just a game.” British forces handed over Muthanna province in July and Dhi Qar in September, both in the relatively calm Shiite south of the country. Britain has said it hopes to hand the oil-rich Basra province back to Iraqi control in the first half of 2007.

The power handover came as new US Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad with a mandate from US President George W. Bush to help forge a new Iraq war strategy. He made the unannounced trip to the battlefront just two days after taking over at the Pentagon.

Gates went in pursuit of advice from his top military commanders on a new strategy for an increasingly unpopular, costly and chaotic war — one he has conceded the US is not winning. His trip so soon after taking office underscored the Bush administration’s effort to be seen as energetically seeking a new path in the conflict.

“The whole purpose is to go out, listen to the commanders, talk to the Iraqis and see what I can learn,” Gates told reporters as he boarded his aircraft in Washington on Tuesday.

Shortly before Gates’ arrival, the US military in Iraq announced that a senior Al-Qaeda leader had been arrested in the northern city of Mosul on Dec. 14. “The terrorist leader was attempting to flee from the location when Coalition Forces chased him across a street and detained him,” the statement said. It said the suspect served as Al-Qaeda’s military chief in Mosul in 2005, and then took up the same job in western Baghdad.