Iraq

For Sadr, just living may be better part of valor

BAGHDAD - Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, with 2,500 U.S. troops poised to move against him and under pressure from the country's top ayatollah, may have chosen political survival over a hero's last stand that would likely end with him captured or killed.

Sadr, 30, on Wednesday dropped tough demands to end his standoff with the United States and agreed to negotiate with the Americans through intermediaries without preconditions, said his aide Amer al-Husseini.

The move was a far cry from his attitude just the day before, when he struck a defiant note. "I fear only God," he proclaimed in an interview with Lebanon's al-Manar television station. "I am ready to sacrifice my blood for this country."

The change of heart came after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani persuaded Sadr to drop his demands, which had included the withdrawal of U.S. forces from all Iraqi cities and the release of detained clerics loyal to him, conditions the U.S. military was unlikely to accept.

Sistani, an older, more moderate cleric who commands the respect of Iraq's Shiite majority, is eager to avoid a U.S. assault on Najaf, the country's holiest Shiite city, where Sadr is holed up.

Besides self-preservation, Sadr may be hoping that a compromise that ends the U.S. hunt for him could even turn the standoff to his advantage. The surprising strength shown by the Mahdi Army militia in fighting last week with coalition forces has made him a hero to some Shiites and even to some Sunnis.

Reports circulating in Iraq this week spoke of offers to turn Sadr's movement into a political party and to disband his militia as part of a coalition-led campaign to disarm and assimilate similar groups in Iraq's security forces.

The United States, however, has vowed to destroy his militia and bring Sadr to justice on charges he killed a rival cleric a year ago. U.S. officials have shown little sign of accepting any compromise that would allow Sadr to go free. They accuse him and his militia of using mob violence and seeking to wreck democracy in a future Iraq.

Sadr, however, is likely counting on the Americans' reluctance to enflame Iraq's Shiite majority by sending troops into Najaf to capture him in his office, only a stone's throw away from one of Shiism's holiest sites, the shrine of Imam Ali.

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