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April 17, 2004

Najaf simmers

Our hostage seems to be dominating the Iraq coverage right now. Juan Cole gives us an update on Najaf and other areas:

Back in Najaf (about an hour's drive south of Baghdad), the US increased the number of Polish and Spanish troops around Najaf in preparation for a possible battle for the city. A physician at Kufa hospital said that at least 5 persons had been killed and 20 injured, many of them seriously.

Hope for a negotiated settlement ebbed Friday. On the one hand, Muqtada seemed to go back and forth between saying he would negotiate and then refusing to. On the other, the US put stipulations on the mediation effort that were unacceptable to the grand ayatollahs in Najaf.

Khidhir Jafar al-Khuza'i, from a splinter group of the Shiite al-Da`wa Party, said that the day before yesterday "we had laid out the American point of view for the grand ayatollahs and Mr. al-Sadr, but the religious leadership considered one of the conditions set by the Americans to be crippling." He refused to give any details about the condition.

Posted by Norwood at April 17, 2004 09:14 AM
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