Sadr calls for referendum on accord being negotiated between US and Iraq

DISSIDENT SHIA cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is calling for a popular referendum on a status of forces agreement between Iraq and the US.

This demand, issued in a website message to his followers, proposes “organised media action” and “a unified political and parliamentary movement” against the agreement, which is set to replace the UN resolution legalising the presence of US troops in the country at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, in northern Iraq yesterday, a suicide bomber killed 14 police recruits and two policemen. Militants also attacked a US-backed neighbourhood patrol in Tikrit north of Baghdad, police said. At least 12 gunmen were killed in clashes after jumping out of a fuel tanker and firing on the patrol.

However, the US military has said that violence is at a four-year low, and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki highlighted those successes yesterday at a conference in Stockholm where he pressed Iraq’s creditors to cancel some $60 billion (€39 billion) in debts.

Two of the country’s biggest lenders, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, sent only junior representatives to hear the call. Mr Maliki said the large debts, some dating back almost 30 years, and compensation payments for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, were shackling the economy.

On the status of forces agreement Mr Sadr said protests should begin after prayers today “until further notice, or the treaty is cancelled”. If the government were to ignore or reject his demand for a vote, he threatened to command his political offices to “work on collecting millions of signatures opposing” it.

The government of Nuri al-Maliki has been negotiating with the US since January, but terms under discussion have not been revealed. In April, US ambassador Ryan Crocker said the agreement will authorise US military operations, grant authority to detain suspects and provide legal protection for troops, but not lay down troop levels or mandate permanent military bases.

Mr Sadr renewed his demand for a timetable for withdrawal of US forces which his al-Mahdi army has been battling since mid-March.

Mr Sadr’s referendum demand seems to have the blessing of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric. The London-based Arabic daily, al-Hayat, reports that when Mr Maliki visited him recently in the city of Najaf, the ayatollah warned him to “deal cautiously with the agreement and . . . to organise a national referendum on it”.

University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, a US Iraq analyst, says one reason for the “referendum approach is that the Iraqi parliament is not seen as strong enough to express the will of the people. It . . . is tyrannised by the ruling Shia fundamentalist and Kurdish blocs and sidestepped by Mr Maliki. Iraq is being run by the cabinet, which often doubles as both executive and legislature.”