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Shiite spiritual leaders call for unity
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority said Saturday that the clergy-led United Iraqi Alliance must finally unite and form a government one month after the country's first democratic elections. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's effort to break Iraqi's deepening political impasse came as Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, 56, flew home to freedom. She left one day after being injured by American troops, who fired on her car as it sped her to Baghdad airport. The Italian intelligence agent who helped negotiate her release was killed. A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi army soldiers in Baghdad's Bab al-Mu'adam area early Saturday, according to Wisam Muhsin, an official at al-Kindi hospital. Another four soldiers were injured. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, al-Sistani appealed for unity among the alliance's 140 parliamentary deputies after two of its leaders dropped out to protest its inability to barter a deal with other parties — including the Kurds, who control 75 seats — to form a coalition government. Al-Sistani met with one of the alliance's few Sunni members, Sheik Fawaz al-Jarba, and asked him to inform the alliance "to unite and to form the new government as soon as possible and not to delay this issue any longer, and that the interests of Iraq and Iraqis should be their first priority." Leaders of the Shiite-dominated alliance met in central Baghdad to find ways of finally convening the 275-member National Assembly elected Jan. 30. They have already twice delayed convening the assembly, prompting Ali Hashim al-Youshaa and Abdul-Karim Mahmoud al-Mohammedawi, who heads the Iraqi political group Hezbollah, to drop out. Al-Mohammedawi, dubbed "Prince of the Marshes," led the resistance movement against Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in the southern marsh region. "Al-Sistani demanded that we put aside minor matters and that we should be united. I am not comfortable with the delay in holding the assembly," said Mudhar Shawkat, a senior official in Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The failure to convene the assembly "represents an insult to Iraqi voters," he said. The main sticking point in forming a government has been the alliance's inability to broker a deal with the Kurds, who are demanding control over oil-rich Kirkuk. Earlier Saturday, alliance leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim met with Barham Saleh, a Kurd who is the deputy prime Minster for national security affairs. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose party finished third with 40 seats, has also called on the assembly to convene "hopefully as soon as possible." Convening the assembly would not necessarily speed up the political process, but it could pressure parties to move toward choosing a government. The government's first order of business would be to elect a president and two vice presidents — a Presidential Council that then has two weeks to choose a candidate for prime minister. That council election requires a two-thirds majority. Sgrena, 56, left Baghdad in an Italian government plane and was met at the Rome airport by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. She was abducted in Baghdad on Feb. 4. Sgrena was wrapped in a blanket and apparently hooked up to an intravenous drip as she was carried off the plane and taken to a hospital. Berlusconi, an ally of the United States who has kept Italian troops in Iraq despite public opposition at home, has demanded an explanation from the United States for the shooting, and received assurances from President Bush (news - web sites) in a five-minute conversation that the incident will be investigated. Berlusconi summoned the U.S. ambassador to Rome, Mel Sembler, for a meeting that lasted about an hour.
The circumstances of Sgrena's release from captivity were unclear. The shooting occurred shortly after she was released Friday from a Baghdad hospital. The U.S. military said the car she was riding in was speeding as it approached a coalition checkpoint in western Baghdad on its way to the airport. Soldiers shot into the engine block only after trying to warn the driver to stop by "hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and firing warning shots," the military said. The Italian intelligence officer protecting Sgrena was killed in the shooting. About 200 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq in the past year, and more than 30 of the hostages were killed. Florence Aubenas, a veteran war correspondent for France's leftist daily newspaper Liberation, and her interpreter, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, were abducted nearly two months ago. In other violence, gunmen in two vehicles west of Baghdad, in Abu Ghraib, killed an Iraqi army officer, said Capt. Akram al-Zubaie. Gunmen killed a Turkish driver and an Iraqi Kurdish official in two separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul on Saturday, witnesses said. The assailants began shouting afterward, saying they belonged to al-Qaida in Iraq and that they shot the driver because he was carrying supplies to American troops, witness Mohammed Jassim Ali said. Also in Mosul, a Kurdish employee working for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Kurdish parties, was killed by gunmen, a party official said. |
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