Shi'ite cleric calls for end to fighting in Iraq

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Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric yesterday appealed for an end to the violence sweeping the country between followers of firebrand Shi'ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr and coalition forces.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani's statement helped ease fears that the uprising would spread to more moderate Shi'ites, who make up the majority of Iraq's population. There was no evidence of that happening as of yesterday.

Nevertheless, a number of Shi'ite religious leaders and Iraqi Governing Council members -- fearful of a wider conflagration -- were pressing the U.S.-led coalition to ease up its assault on Sheik al-Sadr while privately urging the rebel cleric to leave the country or give himself up.

And a Middle East expert with long experience in the region said the United States had better "make plans to hunker down and leave the tents up -- because there isn't anybody else who is going to clean up this mess now."

Ayatollah al-Sistani, the nation's most influential Shi'ite leader, broke a three-day silence yesterday with a formal statement decrying "any action that disturbs order and prevents officials from carrying out their duties."

The reclusive cleric also "condemned the methods used by occupation forces in the current escalating situation in Iraq."

While the Shi'ite leadership in Iraq is divided between those who sympathize with Sheik al-Sadr's nationalist rhetoric and those who feel he is an obstacle to their own political agendas, all support Ayatollah al-Sistani's call for peace.

Sheik al-Sadr's black-clad Mahdi's Army has launched an all-out attack against coalition troops, battling soldiers on the streets of several southern Iraqi cities and Baqouba, north of Baghdad.

U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer has branded the radical cleric an outlaw, wanted in the murder of the widely revered senior cleric, Ayatollah Abdel Majid al-Khoei in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf last year.

"After what Mr. Bremer said, they should arrest him," said Sayed Ayaad Jamaladin, a Shi'ite cleric respected in both Baghdad and Nasiriyah.