Main Shiite cleric backs plan to disband militias

The top cleric told the prime minister to make security his main issue.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The incoming prime minister won the backing Thursday of Iraq's top Shiite cleric for his plan to disband militias, which the U.S. believes is the key to calming sectarian strife and halting the country's slide toward civil war.
But violence flared across a wide area of Iraq on Thursday, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld departed after two days of talks with Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi officials.
In Baghdad, gunmen assassinated the sister of the Sunni vice president a day after he endorsed the use of force to quell Sunni-led insurgents. Elsewhere, one Romanian and three Italian soldiers were killed in a bombing in southern Iraq, insurgents launched attacks northeast of the capital, and a U.S. jet fired missiles at insurgent positions in Ramadi.
The endorsement of al-Maliki's plan came during a meeting in Najaf with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The ayatollah told al-Maliki, a Shiite tapped last weekend to form a government, that security should be a top priority.
"Therefore, weapons must be exclusively in the hands of government forces, and these forces must be built on a proper national basis so that their loyalty is to the country alone, not to political or other sides," a statement from al-Sistani's office said.
What's planned
Al-Maliki plans to integrate militias, many of them linked to Shiite parties, into the army and police. To ensure their loyalty to the government, he wants to appoint defense and interior ministers without connections to militias.
In a briefing Thursday, however, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters that "we are not seeing widespread militia operations across Iraq" and that "ethno-sectarian" attacks had dropped by half in Baghdad over the last week.
Lynch also said U.S. forces had found no "widespread movement" of Shiites and Sunnis away from religiously mixed areas, despite reports to the contrary by Iraqi officials.
"So we do not see us moving toward a civil war in Iraq," Lynch said. "In fact we see us moving away from it."
But there was little sign Thursday that the violence was nearing an end.
In Baghdad, gunmen firing from a speeding car assassinated Mayson al-Hashimi, sister of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, as she left her home in a southwestern neighborhood, police said. Her bodyguard was also slain.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack. On Wednesday, however, Vice President al-Hashimi, a Sunni, joined Shiite and Kurdish leaders in calling for the use of force if necessary to crush the Sunni-led insurgency.
The Italian and Romanian soldiers were killed near Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, when a bomb exploded near their four-vehicle convoy in a Shiite area. The death was Romania's first combat loss of the war.
The Italian news agency ANSA reported conflicting claims of responsibility by the Islamic Army in Iraq, a major insurgent group, and the lesser-known Imam Hussein Brigades.
In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police and soldiers repelled nine attacks Thursday by insurgents against police stations and checkpoints at the edge of the city, Iraqi officials said.
Seven Iraqi soldiers and 21 insurgents were killed, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Awad said.
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