Iraqi rebel cleric defies US to kill, capture him

Iraqi rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has warned the United States that Iraqis would hit back with unimaginable ferocity if US forces carried out a threat to kill or capture him.

"If I am killed or detained the Iraqi public will know how to respond with a force and severity whose extent no one will have imagined," Sadr told Lebanon's as-Safir newspaper.

"Their threats to kill or detain me are a result of their weakness and collapse in the face of what has happened, and is happening, in Iraq," he said, adding that he did not fear death.

With Washington pledging to kill or capture the cleric after his Mehdi Army militia launched an uprising, US troops are now poised around the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, whose centre Sadr's loyalists control.

The top US general said talks were under way to avoid a bloodbath in Najaf. A delegation from Iran has been in Iraq to help mediate between US-led forces and Sadr.

A Sadr spokesman said on Wednesday the young cleric had dropped conditions for entering negotiations with Washington, but Sadr has told some media otherwise. His opponents say his position fluctuates and he lacks credibility.

Sadr made no mention of negotiations with the United States in comments yesterday, but slammed the US occupation of Iraq.

"America, which purportedly crossed oceans to liberate Iraq and spread democracy, has instead of liberating it, occupied it, destroyed its infrastructure, and sown fear and panic among its citizens...and curbed every follower of freedom," Sadr said.

Recent weeks have been Iraq's bloodiest since Saddam Hussein was ousted a year ago. The US military has lost at least 92 troops in combat since March 31 - more than the total killed in the three-week war that toppled the former Iraqi leader.

Lebanon's top Shi'ite cleric said Washington would fan fury across the Muslim world if it invaded Najaf or attacked Sadr.

"We reject the siege of the Iraqi people who demand freedom, threats to holy cities like Najaf and Kerbala and to religious symbols and talk of killing or capturing Moqtada al-Sadr," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said in his Friday sermon.

"All of this will set the ground burning beneath their feet, not just in Iraq, but in the whole of the Islamic world."

Fadlallah, respected by Shi'ites across the world, stopped short of backing Sadr but urged Iraqis to confront US forces.

"We want the wounded Iraqi people, who face death, injury and destruction to rise up in national unity...to create a new, free Iraq run by their will not the will of the occupation."

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq