MIDDLE EAST Iraqi forces ready to move on cleric

The Iraqi government's conditions are unfair, an al-Sadr spokesman said.
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi forces could begin an offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr within hours, despite the firebrand cleric's acceptance of a peace proposal, an Iraqi Cabinet minister said today.
To prevent an imminent attack on his forces, who are holed up in the revered Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, al-Sadr must immediately disarm his Mahdi Army militia and hand over its weapons to the authorities, Minister of State Qassim Dawoud said.
The cleric must also sign a statement saying he will refrain from future violence and release all civilians and Iraqi security forces his militants have kidnapped. In addition, al-Sadr must hold a news conference to announce he is disbanding the Mahdi Army.
"The military action has become imminent," Dawoud told reporters. "If these conditions are not met, then the military solution will prevail."
Response
After hearing Dawoud's threat, Sheik Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, a spokesman for al-Sadr in Baghdad, called for talks to quickly "stop the bloodbaths in the holy city of Najaf."
"What we want is for the parties to sit down and cooperate. To ask a side, or the Sadrist movement, to disarm, I think is not logical and not right. They should rather sit around a negotiating table and determine what's right and wrong," he told Al-Arabiya television.
Explosions and gunfire could be heard today in the streets of Najaf, where al-Sadr's militants have been fighting a combined U.S.-Iraqi force for two weeks. Three U.S. tanks and two humvees were parked about 400 yards from the shrine, about as close as U.S. forces have come to the holy site during the fighting.
Fighters from the Mahdi Army militia could be seen manning positions in narrow alleys of the Old City and outside the shrine compound. A clock on the compound's outer wall, reportedly hit by shrapnel, was smoldering.
Fearful of the violence, few civilians ventured out, and most stores, some damaged during the fighting, were closed.
Conditions
Late Wednesday, al-Sadr sent a letter to Iraq's national conference gathering saying he would accept its peace plan to put down his arms, withdraw from the shrine and turn to politics in exchange for amnesty for his fighters. However, he wanted an end to the fighting before he complied and he wanted to negotiate how the plan would be implemented, his aides said.
The government today demanded he comply without any conditions, and Dawoud said he had already toured Najaf's hospitals to ensure they were properly supplied to handle the casualties expected from a final offensive.
"We will take the military action to ... end this abnormal phenomenon so that this phenomenon would be a lesson for all the outlaws" in Iraq, Dawoud told Al-Arabiya.
He also demanded al-Sadr disband several Mahdi Army courts he had set up to mete out punishments, including the death penalty and amputations.
In Washington, the Bush administration said al-Sadr needed to match words with deeds. "We have seen many, many times al-Sadr assume or say he is going to accept certain terms and then it turns out not to be the case," said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Conference
The cease-fire agreement was announced at the National Conference in Baghdad, which had sent a delegation to negotiate with al-Sadr.
The four-day conference, a gathering of more than 1,000 prominent Iraqis, was seen as an important milestone on the country's path to democracy.
It ended Wednesday with the selection of 81 members of a new National Council. The remaining 19 members will be drawn from members of the former U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council who were left out of the interim government.
The council, to sit next month, is supposed to act as a watchdog over the interim government until January elections.
Video aired
As clashes in Najaf continued, Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired a video today showing a militant group that called itself the Martyrs Brigade vowing to kill a missing western journalist if U.S. forces do not leave Najaf within 48 hours. The authenticity of the tape could not be determined.
The video showed a man resembling missing journalist Micah Garen kneeling in front of five masked militants, who were armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Garen's father and his fianc & eacute;e were unavailable to comment.
According to witnesses, Garen and his Iraqi translator, Amir Doushi, were walking through a market in the southern city of Nasiriyah on Friday when they were seized by two armed men, police said. At the time of his abduction, Garen, 36, was working on a story about the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq, his fianc & eacute;e, Marie-Helene Carleton said.
The standoff in Najaf has increasingly infuriated the government, and Wednesday afternoon Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said he could send Iraqi forces to raid the shrine within hours. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi issued a statement accusing the militants of mining the area around the shrine.
Hours later, al-Sadr's office sent a message to the conference, saying he would accept the gathering's peace proposal.
The U.S. military says the clashes have killed hundreds of militants, though the militants deny that. Nine U.S. troops and at least 40 Iraqi police have been killed as well.