BAGHDAD, Jan 14 (AFP) - Radical Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr urged US President George W. Bush and Iraq's neighbours Friday not to interfere with the January 30 general elections.
"This affair is none of your business," the young Shiite leader said, addressing Bush in a Friday sermon read by one of his representatives at a mosque in his Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City.
"I call on all neighbouring and non-neighbouring countries, occupiers and non-occupiers, not to meddle in the country's internal affairs, including the elections," he said.
Sadr has not appeared in public for weeks and is not running in the landmark elections which the majority Shiites are expected to dominate. However, some key members of his entourage have thrown their weight behind frontrunner Abdel Aziz Hakim's Unified Iraqi Alliance.
In the southern holy Shiite city of Najaf, Sheikh Sadreddin al-Kubbanji reiterated his community's insistence on holding the vote as scheduled, despite Sunni boycott calls and growing anti-Shiite attacks.
In Baghdad Friday, a leading fundamentalist Sunni imam, Sheikh Mahmud al-Sumaidaie, renewed his call for elections to be delayed.
"It is impossible to hold elections when a community is being marginalised," he claimed.
01/14/2005 15:50 GMT - AFP