Iraqi PM urges war on sabotage

The most active of the sectarian militias that Allawi vowed to disband struck a truce deal in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf with US forces, who agreed to pull back from sacred sites as radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army did likewise. As Iraq appointed an electoral commission to organise its first free elections in January — the key task of Allawi’s interim government — yet more violence, that threatens to derail the process, struck Baghdad. Four US soldiers were killed, bringing the total combat death toll to 600.

‘‘Defeating terrorism and terror is the duty of all Iraqis. I call on you to stand up against these criminal killers and to cooperate with state institutions to destroy this evil,’’ Allawi, a former CIA-backed exiled opposition leader, said in a 15-minute address on the US-funded Iraqiya local television channel. It is not clear how many of Iraq’s 26 million people saw it but Allawi was at pains to identify their concerns — lack of jobs and services like power, and the US military presence.

‘‘We Iraqis can never accept occupation,’’ he said, adding that in two to three years, the oil-rich nation could see an end to hardships. ‘‘These cowardly terrorist acts have delayed and will delay the return of normal life and destroy the national economy and the souls of the people and their daily bread.’’

He said controls on foreigners, abandoned with the fall of Saddam Hussein, would be restored to keep out the likes of Zarqawi, who is Jordanian, and other foreign militants. Iraqi police seized a close aide to Zarqawi on May 30, the US Military said. A spokesman said Umar Baziyani was providing information but gave no details of the arrest.

In Najaf, peace seemed at hand after two months of fighting across Shi’ite southern Iraq. The city’s governor said rebel cleric Sadr and US commanders agreed to withdraw forces. Hailing the truce as a ‘‘breakthrough’’, US Colonel Brad May told CNN he would begin pulling back his troops from positions near the city’s shrines to allow Iraqi police to take over.

Washington has been keen to resolve the conflict in Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa ahead of the planned transfer of formal sovereignty to Allawi’s government on June 30.

Allawi, who has cultivated ties with the old Iraqi military, said the new Iraq should assimilate all who were not wanted for crimes — an apparent reference to millions of former members of Saddam’s Baath Party in the military and other fields. —(Reuters)