TEHRAN: The political leader of the most effective guerrilla force in Iraq warned the United States on Sunday not to take unilateral military action against Saddam Hussein without United Nations approval.

“We don’t agree with an American attack on Iraq. It will cause great damage and suffering to ordinary people,” Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the spiritual and political leader of Iraq’s Shia community in exile, told the Guardian at his heavily guarded headquarters in central Tehran.

The ayatollah fled Iraq in 1980 and, with Iranian government support, set up the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).

Western governments estimate that Sciri has a force of between 7,000 and 15,000 men. The ayatollah provides political leadership but is not involved in military operations or the group’s bases and training camps close to the Iraqi border.

Sciri’s units make sporadic raids on police stations and army positions inside Iraq. Along with the Kurds in northern Iraq, they are the main armed opposition to Saddam Hussein. During the Gulf war they mounted an uprising and fought fiercely against the Iraqi, but felt betrayed when US-led forces pulled out in 1991. This left them at the mercy of Saddam, who exacted massive reprisals, sending a new generation of Shias to death and into exile.

The ayatollah’s reluctance to endorse US strikes on Baghdad appears to be a retreat from his position last autumn. It is partly in deference to the many Arab governments who have warned the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, on his Middle Eastern tour, not to inflame Arab opinion by taking unilateral measures.

Ayatalloh Baqir said that Saddam was weaker than the Taliban. “The Taliban had an ideology and the support of many Afghans who defended them. Saddam does not have any popular support.”

His remarks were a veiled response to US secretary of state Colin Powell’s comment that “Iraqi opposition forces are weaker than the Northern Alliance” and “Saddam Hussein is stronger than the Taliban”.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.