Shiite cleric opposes deal to station troops in Iraq

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday offered full support for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government if it refuses to sign an agreement President Bush has sought to allow semipermanent stationing of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Sadr warned at the same time that he would oppose any agreement between Iraq and the United States.

Sadr’s followers have abandoned active resistance in recent months, as Maliki’s government has asserted its authority in military offensives around the country. Sadr’s statement, posted Wednesday on his Web site, said that elements of his insurgency had erred in targeting fellow Iraqis and called for a centralized resistance directed only against U.S. occupiers.

Declaring that resistance to an occupier “is a legitimate right by human reason and in Islamic and human law,” he called on Shiite clerics to “issue their fatwas against signing any agreement between the government and the occupier, even if it is for friendship or any other purpose.”

But on the issue of the status of forces agreement, he offered Maliki a deal: “I call upon the Iraqi government again not to sign this agreement and I inform them I am ready to support it popularly and politically if they do not sign it,” he said.

Much of the 11-point statement seemed intended to curb the internecine warfare carried out in his name since 2006, when the bombing of the al-Askari Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a wave of retaliatory killings between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Before it abated, Shiite death squads were targeting other Shiites, and Sadr — scion of a family of clerics who once drew respect from Shia and Sunni alike — had lost credibility with all but his most devoted followers.

The statement sets careful limits to resistance, condemning any freelance guerrilla action. It also prohibits his followers from targeting civilians and government services, and bars any resistance actions in cities.