NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 17 -- Rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr on Tuesday rebuffed a delegation of Iraqi political leaders seeking a face-to-face meeting to persuade him to disband his militia and vacate a large Shiite Muslim shrine here, increasing chances of intensified U.S. and Iraqi military action to evict him and his followers.
The eight-member delegation, led by a senior cleric who is a relative of Sadr's, crossed a U.S. military cordon and braved nearby gun battles to reach the gold-domed Imam Ali shrine, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites. The goal was to forge a deal with Sadr to end a potentially destabilizing confrontation and convert his militia into a political organization that would take part in elections.
_____Who Is Sadr?_____
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Q & A: More on the firebrand Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army has been fighting U.S. and Iraqi troops.
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The delegates, who waited for Sadr for three hours in a darkened receiving room, never saw him. His aides said he failed to appear because of continued aggression by U.S. forces, which have engaged in intense offensive operations against Sadr's militiamen in Najaf's old city, near the shrine. Qais Qazali, a Sadr spokesman, condemned the United States for "preventing peaceful negotiations."
Military assaults occurred before and after the delegation's visit, with U.S. Army units using Bradley Fighting Vehicles to expand their zone of control in the old city and U.S. Marines lobbing 155mm artillery shells into the massive cemetery north of the shrine. But a senior American commander in Najaf insisted that operations paused during the attempted peace talks. "We sat still for the entire time," said Maj. David Holahan of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which commands U.S. forces in Najaf.
To this correspondent, who accompanied the delegation, it appeared that both sides were partly correct. As the delegation arrived, the distinct, repetitive thud of a Bradley's 25mm main cannon echoed through the labyrinthine alleys leading to the shrine, answered occasionally by the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade, likely fired by Sadr's Mahdi Army militiamen. But as the evening wore on, the sound of American armaments ceased and was replaced with more than a dozen bone-rattling booms of Mahdi Army mortars being fired from next to the shrine.
As the delegation approached the shrine in two sedans, without armed guards and with only white undershirts tied to the antennas to indicate they were noncombatants, members saw a city in the vise of war.
In neighborhoods away from the shrine that are under U.S. control, the streets were deserted save for patrols by Iraqi policemen wearing face-covering balaclavas.
In closer-in areas, militiamen roamed the streets with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They had set up barricades on streets and gun nests in abandoned buildings. To avoid detection by Marine snipers perched atop the city's tallest buildings, reinforcements were being ferried in through a network of alleys that cut through rows of old brick buildings.
Although the Mahdi Army has been described by some U.S. military officials as a hobbled outfit that has taken hundreds of casualties in the past week, Sadr's militia appeared to be everywhere in the neighborhood near the shrine. Scores of armed young men walked along the streets.
When the delegation entered the walled-off, white marble courtyard of the shrine, about 1,000 of Sadr's supporters converged on the group, stamping their feet, raising their fists into the air and shouting, "Long live Moqtada!"
To Sadr's followers, the United States' June 28 transfer of political authority to an interim Iraqi government was meaningless. In their view, the presence of 140,000 U.S. troops on Iraqi soil means their nation is still under occupation.
"We want peace. We don't want war," declared Samir Narem, a tall, bearded man in an ankle-length tunic who joined the crowd that turned out for the delegation. "But we don't want occupation. We will die before we give up."
As dusk turned to darkness and a warm breeze wafted through the city, strings of green lights hanging from the wall of the shrine illuminated the courtyard and the intricate mosaics on the brick walls. Scores of young men, who had completed their evening prayers, reclined on large carpets unrolled over the marble floor. Every now and then, someone would lead the crowd in chants of "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!"
"We are here to protect the shrine from the Americans and their pawns in the government of Allawi," said an English-speaking engineer from the southern city of Basra, referring to interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. "If we have to give our lives to protect this place, so be it. We will go to paradise," said the man, who gave his name only as Abbas.
