Shi'ite cleric Sadr keeps Iraq guessing over truce

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will decide within days whether to extend or scrap his Mehdi Army militia ceasefire, a move that will have big repercussions for security in Iraq.

U.S. military officials say Sadr's six-month truce order on August 29 has played a big part in reducing sectarian violence and clashes between the militia and U.S. and Iraqi forces.

A return to hostilities could risk those security gains at a time when Iraqi leaders have begun making some progress toward reconciling majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

"It's critical that Sadr continues to observe the ceasefire," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow and Iraq expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Sadr had not made up his mind about the truce, his spokesman Salah al-Ubaidi said on Wednesday.

"In the coming few days he will decide," Ubaidi said.

Many Mehdi Army members and Sadrist political leaders say they want the truce ditched, accusing the security forces of using it to detain many of Sadr's followers.

Ubaidi said Sadr would issue a statement around February 23 if he was renewing the truce. Silence would mean it was over.

The son of a revered Shi'ite cleric killed under Saddam Hussein, Sadr led two uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004.

He imposed the ceasefire after deadly clashes in August between the Mehdi Army and security forces allied with a rival Shi'ite organization, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), in the holy city of Kerbala killed dozens of people.

Sadr vowed to reorganize the splintered militia, which had also been blamed for much of the sectarian fighting in Baghdad that tipped Iraq close to all-out civil war.

The U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, told Reuters last week that he expected the anti-American cleric to extend the freeze. A senior official in the Shi'ite-led administration had been told the same thing.

PARTIAL FREEZE?

An official in Sadr's office in the southern city of Basra said the cleric might announce a partial lifting of the truce, perhaps in some provinces where followers had been targeted.

A prominent Mehdi Army commander in Baghdad said he believed Sadr would end the ceasefire.

"If he does not ... there must be exceptions -- of which the most important one is self-defense," said the commander.

The U.S. military has praised Sadr for the truce but has still pursued what it calls "rogue" Mehdi Army militants, who commanders say get funding and weapons from neighboring Iran.

A U.S. official in Baghdad said Sadr had used the past six months to weed rogue elements out of the militia, which has tens of thousands of members in Baghdad and southern Iraq.

But he said tensions remained high with the government and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has strong influence with the security forces and local governments in southern Iraq.

Revoking the ceasefire would be a setback for Iraq, the International Crisis Group think tank said in a recent report.

"This would not only a resumption of sectarian killings, but also an escalation in the fratricidal war between rival Shi'ite militias," it said.

Biddle said he believed Sadr was observing the truce because of increased U.S. troop levels and a move by some Sunni Arab insurgents to stop fighting.

"The combination of Sunni ceasefires, the U.S. surge and the misbehavior of his own militia boxed him into a situation where continued warfare was unattractive," Biddle said.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Farhan in Najaf; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)