Iraq Shi'ites clash, parliament to vote on charter

BAGHDAD - Supporters of an Iraqi Shi'ite cleric opposed to a new, US-backed constitution clashed with police and rival militias in Baghdad and other cities overnight.

As it prepared to force the draft through parliament on Thursday, the Shi'ite-led government tried to calm passions.

But on top of a bloody show of force by Sunni insurgents on Baghdad's streets on Wednesday, the violence involving Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army and rival Shi'ite groups may dent its hopes of a smooth passage for the charter in an October referendum.

Sadr, a strident nationalist whose followers deride rival Shi'ite Islamist leaders for their time in exile in Iran, has joined leaders of the Sunni Arab minority in denouncing the draft constitution as a recipe for the break up of the state.

Washington has pressed for the charter's adoption as part of a strategy to eventually pull out its troops. It announced plans to send 1,500 elite soldiers as part of possibly some 20,000 extra forces to police the referendum and a December election.

Accounts of an attack on a Sadr office in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf were patchy and confusing. But it was followed after dark by more clashes there, in at least three Shi'ite districts of Baghdad and in towns across the Shi'ite south.

"CALL TO ARMS"

A Sadr spokesman warned of a "general call to arms" if there was no apology and criticised Najaf's governor, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Sadr supporters said his office in Najaf was targeted. It had reopened this week following a year's closure since a US offensive in the city that put down the second of two uprisings the young cleric led against the US-led occupation.

One of his followers, who sits in the government as health minister, said eight people were killed inside the office. Another said the building had been burned down. Dozens of people were wounded in subsequent clashes, hospital officials said.

Accusations flew but were vague. The head of the Badr movement, SCIRI'S armed wing from its days in Iranian exile, denied involvement in the attack and called it a "criminal aggression" aimed at dividing Iraq's Shi'ite majority.

There were scattered reports of violence at Shi'ite political offices in Basra, Nasiriya, Samawa and Diwaniya, where one police source said a Polish military patrol was attacked.

Interior Minister Bayan Jabor, from SCIRI, went on state television to say he had dispatched police commandos to Najaf, some 160 km south of Baghdad, and imposed a curfew. Opponents complain the police have recruited many Badr members.

JAAFARI URGES CALM

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, from another Shi'ite Islamist party Dawa, made an impromptu live television address after midnight to urge calm and to praise the Sadr movement.

"I condemn these events that target offices of the religious authorities ... I promise an investigation to find out who was behind this incitement," said Jaafari, speaking with unusual urgency.

"The gun and the language of the gun must end," he said, calling on Iraq's newly empowered Shi'ites to remember the repression they suffered under Saddam Hussein.

Sadr supporters have demonstrated against the draft constitution in recent days and some joined Sunni demonstrators in a march on Wednesday, part of efforts to mobilise a blocking vote against the charter in the referendum.

Sunnis, largely missing from parliament after failing to vote in national elections in January, say a proposed federal system could hive off Iraq's oil wealth to autonomous Kurdish and Shi'ite regions in the north and south respectively.

The constitution will be torpedoed if two thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote "No." That could happen in three Sunni provinces.

Sadr seems unlikely to be able to swing that kind of vote, although the government has been struggling to staunch discontent even in its southern heartlands where large protests over unemployment and poor local services have taken place.

Sadr is young - barely in his 30s - for such an influential cleric but derives strength from poor Shi'ites and the aura of his father, killed under Saddam in 1999.

On Wednesday, dozens of insurgents ambushed police in a Sunni district of Baghdad in broad daylight.

"It was raining bullets," said a police official.

Police said 10 civilians and three policemen were killed.

Parliament is expected to vote on Thursday on the new constitution although no sitting has been scheduled yet.

When it was presented just before a Monday deadline, the vote was put off for three days, apparently to help tempers cool after Sunnis said they would demand further major changes.

President Jalal Talabani met leaders from the Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish communities on Wednesday to try to forge a consensus on the charter, but he looked unlikely to succeed in time.

- REUTERS