by Kamal Taha
BAGHDAD, Aug 29 (AFP) - Iraq`s prime minister vowed to crush militiamen who refuse to disarm, as militants holding two French hostages served Paris with a 48-hour ultimatum to overturn a ban on Islamic headscarves in schools.
"We will confront this with force... It seems that there are some elements in the Mehdi Army that insist on making things more difficult in Iraq outside of Najaf," he told Iraq`s state-run Iraqiya television late Saturday.
One day earlier, Moqtada Sadr evacuated his mosque bastions in the cities of Kufa and Najaf, where his militiamen disarmed, ordered by Iraq`s Shiite Muslim spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to end weeks of combat.
But six people were killed and 92 wounded in the last 24 hours of clashes between the radical cleric`s militiamen and US troops in his Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, said medics at three hospitals.
Sistani`s five-point ultimatum for peace in Najaf made no mention of Baghdad or any other southern Shiite cities where the Mehdi Army has clashed with coalition and Iraqi security forces.
"The government will not permit private armed groups to operate outside Najaf regardless of whether they are Al-Qaeda groups, Zarqawi groups, bin Laden or the so-called Mehdi Army," Allawi said.
Washington says Jordanian-born militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is the chief operative in Iraq for Osama bin Laden`s Al-Qaeda terror network.
Allawi issued his threats after State Minister Kassem Daoud admitted Sadr`s fighters had not surrendered all their weapons, defying one of three conditions laid down by the government for halting its US-backed assault on the militia.
Many fighters have hidden their arms, as they did after a deal that ended Sadr`s first uprising against US-led troops in June.
Fighting broke out again two months later.
"Turning in weapons is of basic importance. The government will not back down," Allawi said, as his interim government, faced with the enormous task of restoring order to Iraq faced its second foreign hostage crisis in days.
Militants holding two French journalists have reportedly served Paris with a 48-hour ultimatum to overturn a ban on Islamic headscarves in schools, three days after the same group said it killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni.
Citing its "own sources," Al-Jazeera television said the Islamic Army in Iraq demanded France comply with its demand, describing its headscarf law as "an attack on the Islamic religion and individual freedoms".
Jewish skull caps and overt Christian crosses were also included in the ban in order to preserve France`s traditional of secular state education.
Al-Jazeera did not say what would happen if Paris ignored the ultimatum, but Baldoni was shot after Rome refused a demand to pull its troops out of Iraq.
It is the first time kidnappers in Iraq`s four-month hostage saga have sought to secure a policy change abroad. France, which was fiercely critical of the 2003 US-led invasion, has no troops in the country.
The two hostages, Christian Chesnot of Radio France Internationale and Georges Malbrunot of Paris daily Le Figaro, were also briefly shown in a video clip on Al-Jazeera.
They went missing nine days ago after setting out for Najaf to cover fighting between US troops and the Mehdi Army.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin cancelled a trip to the south of France to hold a crisis meeting with his three top ministers in a bid to secure the journalists` release.
Meanwhile, Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, arrived at the head of an EU mission to discuss strengthening EU support in Iraq, the Dutch foreign ministry announced.
And in southern Iraq, a pipeline was sabotaged at dawn, said workers from the South Oil Company as they battled to extinguish the raging fire.
Exports from the southern terminals had already fallen from around 1.8 million barrels per day to 800,000 bpd before the attack.
Disruption to Iraqi exports and frequent sabotage can cost the government millions of dollars of lost revenue -- money that is desperately needed for reconstruction.