25 August 2010
BEIRUT: Prominent Iraqi cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr is considering moving to Beirut to escape Iranian pressures to endorse a second-term for incumbent Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, pan Arab-daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat has reported in the last few days.
Iraqi sources told the Saudi-owned daily that Sadr has refused all offers and suggestions by Iranian officials to accept a second term for Maliki, adding that Sadr was “seriously considering moving to Lebanon and settling in Beirut.”
Tensions between Sadr and Maliki remain tense since the 2008 military operation launched by the Iraqi government against Sadr’s Mehdi Army in the southern city of Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City and Shuala neighborhoods, where the Mehdi Army holds substantial power.
After the fall of the Saddam government in 2003, Sadr organized thousands of his supporters into a political movement, which includes a military wing known as the Mehdi Army.
The sources told Ash-Sharq al-Awsat that all Iraqi and Iranian initiatives to mend fences between Maliki and Sadr have so far failed.
Sadr refuses to meet Maliki, while the serving premier’s supporters have described the Mehdi Army as a “militia.”
Iraq has been in a political deadlock since a March 7 election which produced no outright winner, fueling concerns of a return to widespread violence.
On Tuesday, Ziyad al-Darb, a lawmaker from Iraqiya said Sadrist lawmakers were throwing their weight behind Allawi for prime minister.
Darb told the Iraqi news agency that negotiations with Iraqiya “have reached advanced phases” and Sadrists have “expressed their approval to nominate Allawi for the prime minister post and to form a new government.”
The Sunni-backed Iraqiya alliance headed by Former Iraqi Premier Iyad Allawi won more two seats than Maliki’s State of Law, but neither party won the majority needed to govern and no agreement has emerged from coalition talks.
The Sadrists, who won around 40 seats, will be looking to play a larger role when the next government is formed.
Meanwhile, sources in Beirut said that Sadr owns property in Lebanon, and this could make any possible relocation easier.
“Sadr owns offices and property in Beirut, which are ready to welcome him any time he decides to move,” the sources said, adding that Sadr owned a home somewhere in the Lebanese capital.
Sadr is the fourth son of a prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, who was assassinated along with two of his sons by the Saddam Hussein government in 1999. Muqtada al-Sadr is of Iraqi and Lebanese ancestry. He is a cousin of the disappeared Musa al-Sadr, the Iranian-Lebanese founder of the Amal Movement.
Also, Sadr’s two nephews currently study in Lebanon’s American University of Beirut. Sadr’s cousin Jaafar Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr, who is the Sadrists candidate to head the new Iraqi government, also resides in Beirut.
Iraqi sources in Beirut said Sadr has recently paid several unannounced visits to the capital. The same sources also dismissed that he would be a guest to Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah or reside in south Lebanon.
“Sadr does not want to undergo new pressures after freeing himself from Iranian ones,” the sources told Ash-Sharq al-Awsat. The sources added that Sadr and Nasrallah did not have a “solid relationship.”
Sadr has been living in his self-imposed exile in the Iranian town of Qom since 2007. He is pursuing religious studies. Iranian forces tasked with protecting him have kept his place of residence secret, where he receives only select visitors. – The Daily Star
Copyright The Daily Star 2010.
