PROGRESS IN IRAQ

Iraqi Cleric's Militia in Sadr City Promises to Hand Over Arms
By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: October 10, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 9 - Fighters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, will begin handing over their heavy weapons to the Iraqi police next week from their stronghold in Sadr City, as part of an agreement to disband the militia and end weeks of fighting with American forces, Iraqi and American officials and aides to Mr. Sadr said Saturday.

As part of the deal, American forces have agreed to cease offensive operations in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad that forms the core of Mr. Sadr's support.

Iraqi and American officials expressed some caution over the agreement, pointing out the many times that Mr. Sadr, who led two armed uprisings this year that claimed hundreds of Iraqi and American lives, had broken promises to disarm.

And while Mr. Sadr commands intense loyalty among the fighters in his militia, who often boast they will lay down their lives for him, some leaders inside the movement have expressed doubts about whether the fighters would actually obey an order to give up their large weapons. Policing the agreement would be extremely difficult.

The officials said Iraqi police and national guard units would move into the area and begin searching homes for weapons if necessary. Under the agreement, American commanders said they would continue to patrol the neighborhood, but would not attack Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, except in retaliation.

Under the deal, reached at a meeting attended by American officials, Mr. Sadr's fighters will begin surrendering heavy weapons like mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at a agreed sites on Monday. They will have until Friday to complete the surrender.

Any deal that neutralized the Mahdi Army would allow the American military and the Iraqi government to turn their energies toward the insurgency's core, in the Sunni Arab lands north and west of Baghdad.

The accord on Sadr City came on the heels of a joint American and Iraqi military operation in Samarra last week that re-established the formal control of the Iraqi government there. American and Iraqi officials have said they intend to bring large areas of the country under control before national elections set for January. As of Saturday evening, Mr. Sadr had issued no public statement endorsing the agreement. Iraqi and American officials said they would hold off judging the accord until they actually saw Mr. Sadr's fighters turning in their weapons.

Still, American and Iraqi officials expressed optimism about the agreement, and noted that Mr. Sadr has been greatly weakened in recent weeks. It comes after the Mahdi Army's surrender of the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf in late August, when Mr. Sadr was upstaged by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite leader.

The deal reached Saturday followed weeks of relentless American military pressure in Sadr City, where American planes have been pounding Mr. Sadr's militiamen from the air nearly every night.

More at:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/international/middleeast/10iraq.html?th