by Kemal Taha
BAGHDAD, Aug 18 (AFP) - Militia leader Moqtada Sadr will disarm and quit his shrine stronghold, a sympathiser said Wednesday, hours after the defence minister ordered the cleric`s rebels to surrender or be crushed in battle.
The shock announcement came after Sadr had refused to meet delegates from Iraq`s national conference, who had braved fierce fighting in Najaf to journey to the shrine of Imam Ali, Sadr`s militia headquarters, for security reasons.
"I have in my hands the acceptance letter from the Sadr momvement and from Sayyed (honorific) Moqtada Sadr on the three points put forward by the conference," Jalil al-Shamari, from a dissident branch of the Shiite religious Dawa party, told the conference.
On Monday, delegates passed a resolution calling on Sadr to disarm, abandon the Imam Ali shrine and transform his organisation into a political party.
"Today, he has accepted the three points to end to Iraqis` bloodletting and demonstrated his desire to take an active role in the new Iraq," he added.
Earlier in the day, 10 people were killed and 14 wounded during fierce fighting against US troops, backed by helicopter gunships, in Najaf`s historic Old City, said a doctor at a clinic in the shrine.
US forces, supported by Iraqi security forces have effectively trapped Sadr`s Mehdi Army inside the shrine area.
The government also stepped up its rhetoric vowing to unleash a formidable assault if Sadr failed to surrender.
"The coming hours will be decisive and we will teach them a lesson they will never forget," Defence Minister Hazem al-Shaalan told reporters in Najaf. "In the coming hours they must surrender."
A statement by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi asserted: "The Iraqi government will not sit idly by in the face of this insurgency, but is serious about restoring security and stability in the holy city as soon as possible."
But Sadr`s spokesman Ahmed al-Shaibani expressed surprise at the threats, saying the cleric had agreed to demands made by peace mediators.
The cleric`s abrupt volte face came as it emerged that some of his retinue had been shortlisted for Iraq`s new interim legislature, due to be elected later Wednesday.
But voting was held up after presiding judge Ahmed al-Arargji ordered both lists to be revised because they failed to include the correct number of women.
Women had earlier voiced concern they would not get the full 25 seats allocated to them under the interim constitution adopted before the US-led occupation was formally wrapped up due to the influence of Islamist parties.
From the first list, Arargji read out the name of Abdulkahdim Badr, declared a representative of the organisation of Sadr, who publicly boycotted the national conference, dismissing it as the product of the US-led occupation.
Mithal al-Alusi, a leading light in the Iraqi National Congress party of disgraced Pentagon favourite Ahmed Chalabi charged that there were numerous Sadr representatives on the list.
"There are more than 10 individuals from the organisation, including Ali al-Yasseri, editor in chief of the Hawza Natiqa newspaper. We tried to persuade them to have a role in the democratic process," he said.
The vote has already been postponed by one day amid a whirl of controversy after hundreds of delegates lashed out at the big political parties for trying to hijack the process.
Elsewhere, five Iraqis were killed and 20 wounded when a mortar bomb slammed into a market in the centre of the main northern city of Mosul, medics said.
At least another four were killed when their minibus was trapped in a shoot-out between US forces and insurgents near the southern city of Kut, police and the military said.
Iraqi police said five women students were killed and another five wounded, while the military put the death toll at four.
A US marine was killed in the troubled western province of Al-Anbar and a soldier died in Baghdad, bringing to 705 the number of US soldiers killed in action in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
And a Turkish truck driver kidnapped in Iraq at the weekend has been released and is on his way back to Turkey, Ankara said.
A team of NATO experts has meanwhile begun helping to train Iraq`s new army, after the transatlantic alliance agreed to deploy the training mission in June summit, a spokesman said.