Huge rally presses for US withdrawal date

Iraq: Demonstrations organised by dissident Shias in Baghdad on Saturday were designed to exert pressure on the new Iraqi government to extract from Washington a date for the withdrawal of its troops from the country.

The majority of protesters were followers of the rebellious middle-ranking Shia cleric, Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia fought US forces in the Shia holy city of Najaf and the Shia slum district of Baghdad last year.While militiamen clothed in black were among the crowd and attempted to keep order, they were instructed not to bear weapons or to reply to US gunfire with violence. Some Sunnis and Christians and 24 al-Sadr loyalist members of Iraq's national assembly also participated.

If the estimate that 300,000 took part in the rally is correct, analysts say this could be the largest demonstration in the capital since the 1958 revolution.

Smaller protests took place in Najaf, the restive Sunni city of Ramadi, Mosul and Kirkuk, where Arabs and Turkomen challenged the election of the Kurdish chieftain, Jalal Talabani to the presidency.

In addition to a pull-out of US forces, protesters called for a swift trial for ousted president Saddam Hussein, the release of prisoners, and an end to torture in Iraqi prisons, all popular demands. Mr al-Sadr seems to be gaining ground on the political scene. His Mahdi army militiamen are operating freely in Iraq's southern cities, competing for dominance with the Badr corps of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. It is the leading party in the Shia United Iraqi Alliance, which controls 147 seats in the 275-member parliament. If the new government ignores Mr al-Sadr's demands, he could instruct his two dozen deputies to bolt the alliance, depriving it of its majority. The demonstrations also showed Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has urged his community to remain patient, that young Shias are frustrated at the lack of security, power, water, and jobs and increasingly unwilling to tolerate the US presence in the country.

Meanwhile, a split seems to be developing between domestic Iraq resistance fighters and foreign Islamists who have been targeting Iraqi civilians, policemen and soldiers. In Ramadi, Iraqi activists have been distributing fliers denouncing the Islamists and threatening to identify them to the police and to kill them. Nationalist insurgents argue that the Islamists are undermining the integrity of the resistance by kidnapping and killing civilians. Residents of Baghdad's Sunni Adhamiya district have taken down the black flags raised by al-Qaeda, while in the resistance strongholds of Baqouba and Samarra, there is overt hostility towards this group.

Tribal chiefs and some clerics belonging to the Sunni Association of Muslim Clerics have been urging the resistance to review tactics, set firm goals for the insurgency, and co-ordinate military action with political pressure to enhance the status of the Sunni community, which has been marginalised since the collapse of the Baathist regime two years ago.