IRAQ Shiite cleric urges faithful to resist being uprooted

Three U.S. soldiers died Friday when a roadside bomb tore into their vehicle.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A day after the release of a memo attributed to al-Qaida in Iraq that described a violent campaign to displace Shiite Muslims from many parts of the country, one of the most influential Shiite religious leaders used his Friday sermon to urge the faithful to hold their ground.
"I demand first the government and second the brothers to keep their places," said Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, leader of the capital's largest and most powerful Shiite house of worship, the Bratha Mosque.
"We should not let the terrorists do that," said the outspoken sheik, in response to a memo that the U.S. military said it captured from an al-Qaida hide-out in Iraq. "We should help families in finding a way to stay in their places."
Although the memo could not be confirmed independently, it echoed earlier instructions attributed to insurgency leaders, who are fighting against the establishment of a stable central government. The memo called on insurgents to "displace the Shiites and displace their shops and businesses from our areas."
The memo said Baghdad should be one area of focus for the attacks. It told insurgents to cast a broad net, urging a "cleansing" of "any person suspected of being susceptible for spying against us."
Blames al-Zarqawi
The outspoken Saghir, a member of Parliament who promotes his positions by distributing DVDs of his sermons at Friday prayers, blamed al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for such extreme sentiments. He called al-Zarqawi "an exceptional criminal who hurts all Iraqis."
His words came a day after the U.S. military attempted to discredit the al-Qaida boss by showing him apparently struggling to fire a machine gun and looking less than gallant in a dark sweat suit and white running shoes.
Centuries-old tensions between the Shiites and Sunni Arabs have been at the root of much of the violence that has ripped apart Iraq and led to hundreds of deaths, since the U.S.-led military coalition toppled dictator Saddam Hussein more than three years ago.
American deaths
While Iraqis have endured the bulk of the violence, U.S. forces have suffered at least 2,416 deaths since the start of the war in 2003, according to a count kept by the Associated Press. The count included three U.S. soldiers who died Friday when a roadside bomb ripped into their armored vehicle south of the capital.
It was the second such deadly attack on U.S. forces in two days; a bomb set off in Baghdad on Thursday killed two soldiers.
The Friday bombing occurred in late morning along the highway connecting Babil province with Baghdad, about 60 miles to the north. Iraqi security forces said at least two other Americans were injured while riding inside the humvee, which caught fire after the explosion.
Elsewhere, U.S. troops came under attack on the outskirts of Fallujah and in Samarra. Returning fire, they killed at least five Iraqis, while injuring several others, Iraqi security officials said.
Elsewhere, gunmen kidnapped seven employees of the state-run company that operates oil fields in northern Iraq, police said. The workers were traveling by minibus to the refinery in Beiji when they were stopped by gunmen about 25 miles southwest of Kirkuk.
Security problems in the Kirkuk area, including attacks on pipelines, have hindered Iraq's ability to exploit the vast potential of the northern oil fields. Nearly all of Iraq's oil exports -- averaging less than 2 million barrels a day -- have come from the southern fields around Basra.
More blame
While Shiite militias and loyalists of Saddam's Sunni-dominated Baath Party have been blamed for much of the violence, one Iraqi leader attempted to spread the blame wider.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, himself blamed for allowing security forces under his command to carry out sectarian attacks, suggested that private security workers operating outside the control of the government might be at the root of the attacks.
Speaking on Al Arabiya cable television late Thursday, Jabr said the security companies and their estimated 200,000 employees created an unchecked source of firepower in a nation bristling with antagonism and weapons.
At other mosques Friday, religious leaders from both sides of the Shiite-Sunni divide called for an end to retaliation killings.
Sheik Sadraldeen Qabanchi, the Friday prayer leader at the Imam Ali Mosque in the city of Najaf and a cleric close to Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, suggested that militias had to cease their activities.
Rejects Biden's idea
Qabanchi opposed a solution, proposed early this week by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., to divide Iraq into autonomous Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish homelands.
"The Iraqi will, the constitution and the government are against fragmentation," he said.
At Baghdad's famous Abu Hanifa mosque, Sunni Sheik Ali Zand urged worshippers to "stay away from disarray and keep our wisdom." He called the continued shootings "an act lacking wisdom."