Iraqi vows to claim Arab League seat

Banned militiamen disappear from city

By Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press, 9/8/2003

BAGHDAD -- Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's new foreign minister and a member of the Kurdish minority, said yesterday that he is going to the Arab League meeting in Egypt this week to claim Baghdad's seat in the organization, not beg for it.

Iraq's seat on the pan-Arab group's council of ministers has remained empty since Saddam Hussein's ouster in April. The Cairo-based organization has refused to recognize the US-picked Iraqi Governing Council, which was put in place in July.

"We are not seeking recognition. We are the de facto authority in Iraq, and we are attending as representatives of Iraq," Zebari said in his first comments since being sworn in Wednesday by the Governing Council.

"Our seat has not been abolished, and we are going with a positive attitude."

Amr Moussa, the league's secretary general, has hinted that the bloc may finally recognize the Governing Council as a legitimate government and include it in the 22-member organization. He said the ministers, however, must decide.

In the holy city of Najaf, meanwhile, banned militiamen from the armed wing of a Shi'ite Muslim group stopped their weeklong patrol around a holy shrine where a top cleric was killed in a car bomb last month.

The unexplained disappearance of the Badr Brigade militiamen occurred a day after L. Paul Bremer III, the US civilian administrator in Iraq, said the armed men were acting with the approval of coalition authorities.

However, Qatar-based Al-

Jazeera television reported yesterday that the United States gave armed militias in Iraq's holiest Shi'ite city, 110 miles south of Baghdad, until Sept. 13 to disarm and disband. US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo said yesterday that the American-led coalition would not turn a "blind eye to any militia."

"We are supporting any Iraqi who desires to help secure the country. However, that has got to be through the direction of the central government," Krivo said in Baghdad.

Another senior US military official said on the condition of anonymity that militia groups would be dealt with "gingerly" once tensions cooled in Najaf, where a leading Shi'ite cleric was assassinated in an Aug. 29 car bombing outside Imam Ali Shrine.

The bombing killed at least 85 people.