Top Iraqi Shiite group disarms in compliance to US ban on weapons

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) — The military wing of the main Shiite movement in Iraq has disarmed, as efforts focus on political struggle to end the US occupation, the leader of the supreme assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) told AFP in an interview.

With two weeks left before US forces impose a ban on weapons, Mohammad Baqer Hakim said the Badr brigade, which boasted as many as 15,000 militiamen, had given up its heavy weaponry.

“The Badr forces are no longer armed; they were armed because they were fighting the regime” of Saddam Hussein, he said.

“But now the regime has fallen, the Badr forces are not armed ... it has no tanks, no artillery guns or other heavy weapons,” Hakim said at SAIRI headquarters in his hometown of Najaf, 150 kilometres south of Baghdad.

However, Hakim hinted the force, elements of which have filtered back to Iraq from neighbouring Iran from where they had carried out raids on the ousted Baath regime, still carried light arms.

“The Iraqi people must have the ability to defend themselves against unidentified forces who continue to kill them,” he said in the interview Friday.

The US-British coalition has announced that all Iraqis would need a licence to carry a gun from June 15 from when heavy weapons are outlawed for political groups, apart from Kurds.

Seen as a conservative who owes his movement's survival to Iran, Hakim objects to the presence of US and British forces in Iraq, but has taken the pragmatic decision to participate in the US-sponsored reconstruction process.

“We have to make every political effort possible to hasten the end of the occupation,” Hakim said, implicitly rejecting a wave of guerrilla attacks on coalition forces that have left about a dozen US soldiers dead.

These efforts include “dialogue with the United States, moulding Iraqi public opinion to apply pressure and also by setting up an Iraqi administration to fill the political vacuum,” left by the ouster of Saddam in April.

“We believe there is a very great opportunity for political action,” he said when asked about the anti-US attacks.

The 66-year-old Ayatollah, who returned from 23 years of exile in Iran on May 10, said the Iraqi people — some 60 per cent of whom are Shiite — must chose their own government.

“This government must represent an individual or a party but be the government of the people built on institutions which express the popular will from free and honest elections.”

Hakim said he supported the US campaign, as long it respected the law, to “deBaathify” the administration, or ensure former ranking members of the Baath party are not allowed to return.

“There are probably members of the fallen regime who committed savage crimes ... and we have to get rid of these people by punishing them in accordance with the law..

Hakim, who says he is seeking to build an Islamic Iraq, warned against seeking revenge.

SAIRI is a member of a council of former opposition groups that is preparing for a national congress in July.