Sadr blames U.S. for Iraqi lawmaker death

By Khaled Farhan Reuters - Friday, October 10 03:36 pm

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr Friday blamed the United States for the assassination of a Sadrist lawmaker, killed a day earlier in a bomb attack.

"The martyr gave most of his time to eject the occupiers ... And for this reason the hand of the hateful occupation and terrorism killed him," Sadr said in a hand-written statement as hundreds of supporters gathered to bury Saleh al-Ugaili.

In the Baghdad district of Sadr City men cried and shouted slogans as they carried and walked alongside Ugaili's coffin, draped in the Iraqi flag, before it was taken to a cemetery in the holy southern Shi'ite city of Najaf.

"God is the greatest, America is the enemy of God," chanted mourners in Najaf after Friday prayers.

Ugaili died Thursday when a blast struck his car in the Habibiya district of eastern Baghdad. It was not clear who was behind the attack, which Sadr blamed on the United States. The cleric is vehemently opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and military commander General Ray Odierno have condemned Ugaili's killing as an "attack against Iraq's democratic institutions" and a "heinous crime."

Gunmen clashed with U.S. and Iraqi forces overnight in Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City. The U.S. military said there had been one American casualty, giving no further details.

Another lawmaker from the Sadrist bloc, which has 30 seats in the 275-seat parliament, said the killing could be linked to the upcoming provincial elections, due in January.

The polls are expected to see a struggle for power between rival Shi'ite factions in Iraq's oil-rich south.

"The killing could have two reasons. It could be an internal conflict in the Sadrist movement ... or a fight between Shi'ite powers for control of the streets before the polls," said a political science professor at Baghdad University who declined to be named for security reasons.

Major-General Michael Oates, a U.S. commander in southern Iraq, Thursday said U.S. forces feared a wave of assassinations before the polls.

Violence in Iraq has declined to four-year lows in recent months, but bombings and shootings still take place almost daily, especially in Iraq's north.

SECURITY PACT

Four people were killed and at least 15 were wounded when two bombs exploded in the centre of the northern city of Mosul Friday. The U.S. military says Sunni Islamist militants of al Qaeda have chosen the city to make a stand after being forced from strongholds elsewhere in Iraq.

A car bomb also exploded in southern Baghdad killing five people and wounding 10 Friday, police said.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators are in the final stages of negotiating a security pact that will govern the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq once a U.N. mandate expires this year.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki -- speaking in Najaf after meeting Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- said Washington's request that its troops be immune from Iraqi law was still an issue that needed to be resolved.

Although Sistani does not comment on politics, Maliki's words about the pact after meeting the cleric were notable because Sistani's tacit blessing would almost certainly be necessary to win political support for it.

Sadr's military wing, the Mehdi Army, has launched several uprisings against U.S. forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and has fought rival Shi'ite factions, but in August Sadr extended a year-old cease-fire indefinitely.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim in Baghdad; writing by Mohammed Abbas; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

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