WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (AFP) - Iraqi authorities are patiently biding their time until Moqtada Sadr departs the Imam Ali shrine, hoping to end the standoff without further bloodshed, a top security official told US television Sunday.
"We are pursuing other methods and alternative roots to apply more pressure on Moqtada Sadr to hand over the keys of the shrine to the highest religious authorities," Iraq's interim national security adviser Muwafaq al-Rubaie told ABC television's "This Week" program.
"We are not going to issue an ultimatum. We want to do this properly. We are not after killing more people, we are not after using more force and violence," he said.
He said the radical cleric, whose forces have been holed up in the holy site for two weeks, appeared to be stalling.
"By the look of it, he is procrastinating. He is basically buying time," Rubaie said who said the government was resolved to resolving the standoff peacefully.
"We will exhaust all efforts to try to avoid using violent means and security measures against the security issues," Rubaie said.
"We are trying our level best to apply pressure on different angles, from different directions on Moqtada Sadr to pull out of the shrine and to leave the old city and to disband the militia and to join the political process," he said.
"This is our absolute duty of the Interim Iraqi Government: to establish law and order in Najaf."
Rubaie told ABC that Iraq would welcome a role by Sadr in the country's fledgling democracy.
"He is most welcome to join the political process. He has followers up and down in the country and if the political solution is the solution, we will follow that solution and we will leave no stone unturned," he said.
"We need to think of a political solution as well, try to incorporate this trend and these masses of people into the political process. Because I can tell you the political process in Iraq can accommodate even the most extremist religious group," said Rubaie.
However, Rubaie would not rule out that the Iraqi government eventually could resort to force to reclaim the shrine.
"If we are forced to do it, we the government of Iraq has a duty to reinstate and establish law and order in the city of Najaf whether this is the inner city including the holy shrine," he said.
The two-week crisis in Najaf has provided the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi since his caretaker government received full powers with the formal winding up of the US-led occupation on June 28.
Iraq's interim government has been reluctant to quash the rebellion and take back the shrine without ensuring that nothing is missing and the Mehdi Army is unwilling to surrender control amid any suggestion of impropriety.