U.S. should not provoke Iraq militia - report

By Paul Tait

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military should not provoke the Mehdi Army militia of anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr into a return to the widespread violence that took Iraq to the brink of civil war, a report said on Friday.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank said the Mehdi Army, once described by Washington as the biggest single threat to peace in Iraq, was "unassailable" in strongholds in Baghdad and mainly Shi'ite southern Iraq.

Sadr, the son of a revered Shi'ite cleric killed under Saddam Hussein, led two uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004.

Late on Thursday, U.S. soldiers arrested a senior figure and three others from a "rogue" Mehdi Army unit linked to attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces in eastern Iraq's Wasit province. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers also clashed with gunmen in a Sadr stronghold in Baghdad on Thursday.

The ICG report said it was "fanciful" to imagine the defeat of the Mehdi Army, which has tens of thousands of fighters, and that pressuring it would likely trigger fierce resistance in Baghdad and escalate strife among Shi'ites in the south.

Attacks across Iraq have fallen 60 percent since last June, which U.S. officials say is due mainly to an extra 30,000 U.S. troops and the rise of mainly Sunni Arab neighbourhood police units.

But the ICG said the drop was mainly due to Sadr's Aug. 29 declaration of a six-month ceasefire. On Thursday he ordered members to maintain the freeze, which expires this month, amid growing signs of impatience in the militia.

The report said militants claiming to be Mehdi Army members had executed "untold numbers" of Sunni Arabs in response to attacks by al Qaeda during sectarian violence in which tens of thousands died and took Iraq to the brink of civil war.