IRAQ:THE STRUGGLING Iraqi government of Nuri al-Maliki yesterday continued a two-pronged offensive against the populist movement headed by dissident Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
While the Iraqi army killed six fighters from Mr al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, parliament prepared to debate a Bill banning Sadrist participation in coming elections if the militia is not disbanded.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraqi troops would not call a halt until Sadr City is cleared of armed men, although government forces hold only 12 of the 79 neighbourhoods in this sprawling slum housing three million Shias.
Mr al-Sadr's spokesman, Salah al-Obeidi, accused the government of using the country's security forces to prevent a likely Sadrist victory in coming local and provincial polls.
The continuing struggle for power between the Sadrists and the coalition of Kurds and fundamentalist Shias - the Dawa party and Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) - escalated after parliament approved legislation for elections in October.
The government believes itself to be in a win-win situation by waging a campaign against the Mahdi Army, a 60,000-strong militia which has not been absorbed into the official armed forces as have the SIIC's Badr Corps militia and the Kurdish peshmerga.
The Sadrists, the only Shia faction with a popular following, will be excluded from the poll if the militia is not disbanded. The SIIC and Dawa would welcome cancellation of the poll if the Sadrists keep their militia and attempt to disrupt voting.
The Sadrists have become the focus of US and Iraqi military operations because they continue to call for an end to the occupation.
Last weekend Mr al-Sadr dismissed a suggestion by US defense secretary Robert Gates that the faction could re-enter the political process which it has boycotted for more than a year.
Washington fears the Sadrists could lead parliamentary opposition to a proposed agreement for long-term deployment of US forces in Iraq.
The Sadrists survived last month's Iraqi army offensive against their militia in Basra, the south and Baghdad.
The government, humiliated over the Iraqi army's failure to rout them, has dismissed 1,300 soldiers and police who either deserted or refused to fight ,and initiated a crack down on the operation of petrol pumps by Sadrist gunmen.
Meanwhile, kidnapped British photojournalist Richard Butler, held for more than two months, was freed by Iraqi troops conducting house-to-house searches for criminals in Basra.
Five civilians also died in an attempt to bomb a police patrol in Baghdad.
