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BAGHDAD, Feb 19: Controversial young Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr brandished on Thursday the threat of revolt against the US-led occupation if the country is not ruled by Islamic law. "We warn and advise everybody that the Iraqi people , even though they are passing through a tranquil period of waiting, have also the power to attack its enemies and revolt on them," Sadr spokesman Abbas al-Rubaie said in a statement.
"The Iraqi people that paid almost one million martyrs and more than three million displaced ... will not accept from an employee in the CIA to force the (Iraqi people) to give up his religion."
Sadr, the scion of a prestigious family of Iraqi clerics, invoked the memory of the 1920 Shia rebellion against Iraq's then British occupier and the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein after his disastrous invasion of Kuwait.
The cleric, who taps a core constituency of young, impoverished Shia men from the slums of Baghdad, was joining the howls of protest against US civil administrator Paul Bremer, who told reporters on Monday he was willing to veto Iraq's new constitution if it were based solely on Islam.
Bremer's comments provoked stern retorts from followers of the Shias' spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who warned the top US official not to meddle with popular sentiment.
The US occupation is set to end in June, and the interim Governing Council is hammering out the fundamental law, or temporary constitution, that will govern Iraq until national elections are held in 2005.
The pinnacle of Sadr's influence was last summer and autumn when he led his followers in direct confrontation with the Americans. The firebrand cleric turned silent in October after clashes between US forces and his supporters left two US soldiers dead in Baghdad and he was alerted to the possibility he was under investigation from the coalition.
SISTANI: The spiritual head of Iraq's Shia majority called in a German magazine interview on Thursday for a UN resolution guaranteeing Iraqi elections if preparations for a vote are not wrapped up by June 30.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani warned in the weekly Der Spiegel that any delay in holding an election "must not be long." Asked what would happen if his conditions were not met, he said "the Iraqi people will decide."
"The people who have placed their trust in me know how to behave," he went on, in remarks printed in German. Asked if that could mean violence, he said he did not want to comment.
The interview was published on the magazine's website as UN chief Kofi Annan appeared to discount the prospect of elections before June 30, when US-led forces hand over control.
Sistani repeated his call for early direct elections and his opposition to the US-led coalition transferring power to unelected officials. He said that because the UN gave Washington a mandate to run Iraq until the end of June, the world body "is also committed to monitoring very closely the transition from an occupying regime to Iraqi sovereignty."
"If the necessary preparations for free elections cannot be finished by the end of June due to delaying tactics by the occupiers, two things must happen," he said. "First, the preparations must be brought to an end within a short time and with a UN resolution. "The resolution must contain clear guarantees that there will be no further delays to the election."
Secondly, he added, "the responsibilities to be transferred initially to a non-elected transitional institution must be narrowly defined. The institution must not be allowed to make any important political decision which determines the future of our country. "Such decisions are the preserve of a government that is freely elected." -AFP
