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BAGHDAD - Iraq's new foreign minister, a member of the Kurdish minority, said Sunday that he is going to this week's Arab League meeting in Egypt to claim Baghdad's seat in the organization, not beg for it.
Iraq's seat on the pan-Arab group's council of ministers has remained empty since Saddam Hussein's ouster in April. The Cairo-based organization has refused to recognize the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council, which was put in place in July.
"We are not seeking recognition. We are the de facto authority in Iraq, and we are attending as representatives of Iraq," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in his first comments since being sworn in Wednesday by the Governing Council.
"Our seat has not been abolished and we are going with a positive attitude."
Amr Moussa, the league's secretary-general, has hinted that the bloc may finally recognize the Governing Council as a legitimate government and include it in the 22-member organization. But he said the ministers must decide.
In the holy city of Najaf, meanwhile, banned militiamen from the armed wing of a Shiite Muslim group stopped their weeklong patrol around a holy shrine where a top cleric was killed in a car bomb last month.
The unexplained disappearance of the Badr Brigade militiamen came one day after L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said the armed men were acting with the approval of coalition authorities.
However, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television reported Sunday that the United States gave armed militias in Iraq's holiest Shiite city, 110 miles south of Baghdad, until Sept. 13 to disarm and disband.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. George Krivo said Sunday the American-led coalition would not turn a "blind eye to any militia."
"We are supporting any Iraqi who desires to help secure the country. However, that has got to be through the direction of the central government," Krivo said in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the military said Sunday that U.S. forces around Hussein's hometown of Tikrit uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition hidden in a row of bunkers that residents dubbed the "RPG shopping center."
Saturday's discovery included wire-guided surface-to-surface Sager missiles, 315 rocket-propelled grenades and 62 mortar shells, spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle said.
Also Saturday, two surface-to-air missiles were fired at a coalition aircraft leaving Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. military said.
Coalition forces are increasingly being attacked from a distance by mortars and remote-controlled homemade bombs, a possible change in strategy by anti-American insurgents, Krivo said.
"It's certainly seemed to us from just looking at the evidence that there is a change in tactics on the ground," he said.
The U.S. military also said Sunday that troops captured a suspected Hussein loyalist alleged to have attacked a children's hospital in Baqouba, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, with grenades.
Three U.S. soldiers were killed in the Aug. 11 attack. The suspect, who was captured Saturday, was not identified by the U.S. Central Command.