US seeks to coax al-Sadr into joining electoral process

4.00pm - By DONALD MACINTYRE

BAGHDAD - US officials have joined the growing effort to coax the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr into joining the nascent electoral process and abandoning his armed insurgency.

The move followed indications by aides to Sadr, who was ordered at the end of last week by Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani to withdraw his insurgents from the holy sites of Najaf, that he was ready to end the fighting in Baghdad's Shiite stronghold of Sadr City and contest elections planned for January.

A senior US diplomat said here yesterday that it was "conceivable" that Sadr, a leading figure in the agitation for US troops to withdraw from Iraq, would "complete the transition from militia leader to political leader".

Sheikh Ali Shmeissim, a key lieutenant of Sadr called in Najaf on Monday for Mehdi Army insurgents elsewhere in Iraq "to stop firing until the announcement of the political programme of the Sadrist movement".

Asked yesterday about the prospects of Sadr abandoning the armed insurgency and being given the freedom to fight the elections, if and when they take place, the US diplomat said: "These are decisions the Iraqi authorities will have to take themselves."

He added: "You see what [interim] Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and others have said about the possibility and indeed desirability of Muqtada al Sadr entering the process.

If you take a cold look at the political scene it is clear he has a constituency which does not go away even if the Mehdi Army does."

The official characterised the constituency as being among the poor, unemployed and disposessed."

He said that the huge and densely populated suburb of Sadr City, scene of heavy fighting between insurgents and US forces over the past few weeks, and with well over a million mainly Shiite residents, would be a key electoral battleground.

Mr Allawi has already indicated he wants to pump regeneration funds into the suburb.

The moves follow circulation of a poll taken at the end of July which showed that 56 per cent of electors were positive in varying degrees about Sadr, though much less so than about Mr Allawi.

About 38 per cent were "very positive" and 34 per cent "somewhat positive" about Mr Allwai.

Sadr's ratings are also expected by most observers likely to drop significantly in the wake of the battle for Najaf.

Fifty-seven per cent of Iraqis also thought that the security situation had improved in the month since sovereignty had been handed over by the Coalition Provisional Authority-though that figure may also have dropped after nearly a month of fighting and the latest hostage atrocities.

The poll also showed that a large majority of electors were much less likely to vote for a party without a militia.

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Herald Feature: Iraq