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SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq, March 25 (AFP) - 10h09 -
An aide to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has
met with Iraq's likely future president to request
his help in releasing members of the Sadr movement
held in US-run prisons, a source who sat in on the
meeting said Friday.
Sheikh Ali Sumeisim met Thursday with Jalal Talabani
and other leaders of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan party at their stronghold in Sulaimaniyah
in the Kurdish region.
"He asked Talabani to intervene on the movement's
behalf with US forces so they would release the many
members of the Sadr current that are being held in
US prisons," said the source.
A ceasefire agreement between US and Iraqi forces
and Sadr's Mehdi army that followed a bloody
standoff in Najaf in August, called for the the
handover of weapons by militiamen in return for the
release of detainees in US-run facilities like Abu
Ghraib in Baghdad and Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in
the south.
It is unclear how many Mehdi army members have been
released since the sweeping weapons handover was
completed last autumn.
Sadr has largely stopped appearing and speaking in
public and boycotted the January elections. However,
one of his followers, Fatah al-Sheikh, joined the
United Iraqi Alliance, which swept the elections.
Sheikh and two co-partisans of the so-called Kawader
wal-Nukhab grouping, along with 21 other Sadr
sympathisers, all hold parliamentary seats under the
UIA banner.
According to the source that took part in the
Talabani-Sumeisim encounter, the Sadr follower
complained about the sidelining of the Sadrists in
the current negotiations between the Kurds and the
UIA to form a coalition government.
Talks are now down to sharing cabinet posts,
according to Kurdish and Shiite negotiators.
AFP
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