Mosques Across Iraq To Read Mookie’s Cease-Fire Decision
Yo, Mookie…I have a fix for your dental problems…my fist.
BAGHDAD - Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will have a statement read in mosques at Friday prayer services addressing whether his Mahdi Army will extend a six-month cease-fire that has helped reduce violence throughout Iraq, a Shiite lawmaker said.
The Iraqi legislator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, told The Associated Press on Thursday that “tomorrow there will be a statement from Sayed Muqtada to be read during Friday prayers.”
“No one can predict what decision will be taken,” he said. “Whether it will be an extension of the freeze or not.”
Yet at a rally Thursday in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood to commemorate the fourth anniversary of a Shiite uprising against U.S. forces, Sheik Jamal al-Sudani, the head of the local Sadr media office, addressed a crowd in the thousands with nonviolent rhetoric.
“We have to fight by peaceful ways,” he said. “We have to think of another way to martyrdom, this time not by attack or assassination but by a doctrinal stand.”
Al-Sadr’s decision to take his militia off the streets last August has been widely credited with improving security throughout Iraq, along with a boost in American troop levels and Sunni fighters turning against their former allies from al-Qaida in Iraq.
Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said Wednesday that if the cleric failed to issue a statement by Saturday saying the cease-fire was extended, “then that means the freeze is over.”
The Shiite lawmaker said the statement being released Friday does address the cease-fire, but he could not say whether it extended or ended it.
Some of al-Sadr’s followers, frustrated by U.S. raids against what it terms splinter groups from the Mahdi Army, have called for their leader to put his fighters back on the streets, a step that could drastically worsen sectarian violence.
(AP)
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This statement: “We have to fight by peaceful ways,” he said. “We have to think of another way to martyrdom, this time not by attack or assassination but by a doctrinal stand.”
I can think of a better way than that!
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:21 amHowever,
Is extension of the cease fire a good thing?