Us Soldier Killed Among 28 Others

US Soldier Killed, among 28 Others
Sadrists Reject Draft Law on Confederacies

Guerrillas bombed a minivan carrying recruits for the Iraqi army, killing 16.

Other Sunni Arab guerrillas staged a a mortar attack on a Shiite mosque Monday in Bani Saad, Diyala Province, killing 7 persons.

Altogether, wire services reported 29 dead in civil war violence on Monday, including one US soldier who fell victim to guerrilla sniper fire.

Al-Zaman / AFP report that [Ar.] Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr called Monday for a postponement of the subject of regional confederacies to some other time. The call came during a visit to the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the United Iraqi Alliance, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Ahmad al-Hasani al-Baghdadi, a Shiite religious leader, gave a fatwa or formal ruling that it is impermissible in any way to implement the project of regional confederacies in Iraq. He wrote, “This system of regional confederacies contains political, economic and social ills that serve the American-Zionist project in the region . . .” He also insisted that there is a duty “to boycott whoever calls for it.”

Sheikh Muhammad Yaqubi, spiritual leader of the Fadhila (Virtue) Party, said that parliament is impotent to carry out its legislative and supervisory role. In a veiled reference to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Yaqubi alleged that the heads of the big political blocs had dragged the country into these bloody conflicts by their egoism, and said that they were dictating to others. The FAdhila Party announced that it rejected the draft law on provincial confederacies.

On another front, yet another fissure appeared Monday in the United Iraqi Alliance (religious Shiite parties). The Sadr Movement announced formally that it rejected the draft law for the formation of regional confederacies and for voting on them. Falah Hasan Shanshal, the head of the Sadrist parliamentary delegation, said that it was impossible to establish regional confederacies under the shadow of occupation, since it would lead to Iraq’s partition.