BAGHDAD, Iraq – Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to end their uprising against U.S. and Iraqi forces while he considers forming a political movement, senior al-Sadr officials said Monday.
The announcement came amid conflicting reports on Iraq’s vital oil exports. Iraqi oil officials and the governor of Basra state said exports were shut down after a rash of pipeline attacks. However, world oil prices decreased as traders said other reports suggested some oil was still flowing. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, October contracts for light sweet crude fell 90 cents a barrel to $42.28 – well below peaks above $48 a barrel in mid-August.
Also Monday, the U.S. military said a roadside bomb attack on a U.S. military convoy just outside Mosul killed a U.S. soldier and wounded two. A total of 974 U.S. service members have died since military operations began in March 2003, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
Sheik Ali Smeisim, a political adviser to al-Sadr, announced the cease-fire decision in Najaf, calling on the Shiite cleric’s Mahdi Army militiamen to “stop firing until the announcement of the political program adopted by the Sadrist movement.”
He also urged U.S. and Iraqi troops to move out of the center of Iraqi cities, although that did not appear to be a condition for the unilateral cease-fire. Asked if the truce would take effect immediately, Smeisim said, “I hope so.”
Fiercely opposed to a continued U.S. presence in Iraq, al-Sadr had posed the biggest challenge yet to interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s government, with three weeks of heavy fighting in Najaf threatening to enflame Iraqi Shiites by endangering the revered Imam Ali Shrine.
The government has repeatedly called on al-Sadr to disband the Mahdi Army and join politics. His aides didn’t say whether he was considering dissolving the militia, but for the first time they said he was preparing to enter politics.
“This latest initiative shows that we want stability and security in this country by ending all confrontation in all parts of Iraq,” said Sheik Raed al-Khadami, an al-Sadr spokesman in Baghdad. “Al-Sadr’s office in Najaf will issue a call within the next two days to join the political process.”
Meanwhile, two French journalists held hostage by Islamic militants in Iraq appealed for their countrymen and president to save their lives by giving in to their captors’ demand to rescind a ban on Muslim head scarves in French schools.
A video of the reporters was broadcast by Arab TV station Al-Jazeera hours after France insisted it would go ahead with the ban when schools open Thursday.
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