Militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr yesterday rejected a government ultimatum to disarm his militia immediately and pull them out of a holy Shiite shrine here without conditions, an al-Sadr aide said.
Minister of State Qassim Dawoud said earlier yesterday that if al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia did not give up without negotiations, the government would raid the shrine within hours.
Haidar al-Tourfi, an official at al-Sadr office's office in Najaf, said he received a text message from al-Sadr rejecting the demands.
"Either martyrdom or victory," the message said, according to al-Tourfi.
Explosions and gunfire echoed through the historic heart of Najaf yesterday, after a senior aide to al-Sadr said the radical cleric's fighters would be "happy" to die as martyrs.
The intensification in the fighting came after an Iraqi minister issued another warning to al-Sadr's Mehdi army, which is surrounded by US-led Iraqi government forces at the Imam Ali mausoleum, to disarm or face an onslaught.
Eight people were killed, at least five of them policemen, and 30 wounded when mortar bombs smashed into the provincial police headquarters in Najaf, hospital and official sources said.
Minister of State Kassem Daoud had said an offensive against the Mehdi Army would be launched within hours unless the radical Shiite leader disarmed his fighters.
But key al-Sadr aide Ali Smeisim told a news conference that Daoud had nothing to do with a peace mission from Iraq's national conference, which al-Sadr had accepted.
"He is not part of the negotiations. If there is a US conspiracy orchestrated by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and US agents respond to it, then we'll be happy to be martyrs of this nation," he said.
"We made it clear earlier to all sides, including to the Iraqi government headed by [Prime Minister] Iyad Allawi, that the delegation of the conference welcomed that mediation," Smeisim told reporters in the shrine.
"We are negotiating with the committee of the national conference and we are ready to meet them again in Najaf to implement the conditions and not to negotiate," he said.
On Wednesday, al-Sadr spokesman Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani said al-Sadr had agreed to a three-point resolution put forward by the national conference, namely that he disarm, leave the shrine and turn his militia into a political movement. But implementation of the resolution was dependent on a ceasefire, Shaibani added.
Another aide to al-Sadr, Sheikh Aws al-Khafaji, told al-Jazeera television: "We will not hand the keys of the mausoleum to the American forces because it will be a shame that will haunt us forever."
SEPARATE: The MAC rebutted Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is China’s province, asserting that UN Resolution 2758 neither mentions Taiwan nor grants the PRC authority over it The “status quo” of democratic Taiwan and autocratic China not belonging to each other has long been recognized by the international community, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday in its rebuttal of Beijing’s claim that Taiwan can only be represented in the UN as “Taiwan, Province of China.” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday at a news conference of the third session at the 14th National People’s Congress said that Taiwan can only be referred to as “Taiwan, Province of China” at the UN. Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, which is not only history but
CROSSED A LINE: While entertainers working in China have made pro-China statements before, this time it seriously affected the nation’s security and interests, a source said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) late on Saturday night condemned the comments of Taiwanese entertainers who reposted Chinese statements denigrating Taiwan’s sovereignty. The nation’s cross-strait affairs authority issued the statement after several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑), Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜) and Michelle Chen (陳妍希), on Friday and Saturday shared on their respective Sina Weibo (微博) accounts a post by state broadcaster China Central Television. The post showed an image of a map of Taiwan along with the five stars of the Chinese flag, and the message: “Taiwan is never a country. It never was and never will be.” The post followed remarks
NATIONAL SECURITY: The Chinese influencer shared multiple videos on social media in which she claimed Taiwan is a part of China and supported its annexation Freedom of speech does not allow comments by Chinese residents in Taiwan that compromise national security or social stability, the nation’s top officials said yesterday, after the National Immigration Agency (NIA) revoked the residency permit of a Chinese influencer who published videos advocating China annexing Taiwan by force. Taiwan welcomes all foreigners to settle here and make families so long as they “love the land and people of Taiwan,” Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) told lawmakers during a plenary session at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei. The public power of the government must be asserted when necessary and the Ministry of
INVESTMENT WATCH: The US activity would not affect the firm’s investment in Taiwan, where 11 production lines would likely be completed this year, C.C. Wei said Investments by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in the US should not be a cause for concern, but rather seen as the moment that the company and Taiwan stepped into the global spotlight, President William Lai (賴清德) told a news conference at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday alongside TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家). Wei and US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday announced plans to invest US$100 billion in the US to build three advanced foundries, two packaging plants, and a research and development center, after Trump threatened to slap tariffs on chips made
RSS