Shi'ite leader declares cease-fire

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Anti-American Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr yesterday ordered a six-month "freeze" of activities by his Mahdi Army militia, a force accused of attacking U.S.-led coalition forces and operating "death squads" targeting the country's Sunni Arab minority.

U.S. officials greeted the announcement with caution, but the move could provide a significant boost for the security "surge" now under way in Baghdad and other parts of the country. Aides to Sheik al-Sadr confirmed the young cleric's order included a ban on all attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in the country.

"We declare the freezing of the Mahdi Army without exception in order to rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image within a maximum period of six months," Sheik Hazim al-Araji, a top aide to Sheik al-Sadr, said in a statement read on Iraqi television.

The announcement comes in a week in which intense street battles in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala killed more than 50 people. Authorities blamed the fighting on intra-Shi'ite rivalries between the Mahdi Army and other militias, principally the Badr Brigade, for the control of key mosques and other sites in the city.

The 34-year-old Sheik al-Sadr, the son of a leading Shi'ite cleric killed by Saddam Hussein, has played an ambiguous role in post-Saddam Iraq. He is a fierce critic of the U.S. and international troop presence in Iraq, and Mahdi Army fighters clashed twice with American forces in 2004.

Elements of the Mahdi Army are blamed for sectarian violence targeting Sunnis in Baghdad and for clashes with other Shi'ite militias angling for control in the south. Sheik al-Sadr has disappeared from public view for long stretches of time, and U.S. officials say he has spent at least some time in Iran.

The cleric restricted his adversarial role to the American occupation until the Sunni bombing of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006. Soon thereafter the sectarian strife between Shi'ites and Sunnis escalated sharply.

The Pentagon last year named the Mahdi Army as the single biggest threat to Iraq's long-term security — ahead even of al Qaeda and violent Sunni insurgent groups.

But Sheik al-Sadr has also worked with the elected government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and ordered his fighters not to resist President Bush's recent "surge" of U.S. and Iraqi troops to quell violence in the capital.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey, reacting cautiously to news of Sheik al-Sadr's decision to pause hostilities, said: "Statements have been made by Muqtada al-Sadr in the past and sometimes we've seen an impact and sometimes we haven't."