Iraq PM ends U.S. blockade of militia bastion

[David]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops lifted roadblocks around a Baghdad militia stronghold on Tuesday when Iraq's prime minister ordered them out, flexing his political muscle after a week of public friction with Washington ahead of U.S. elections.

Supporters of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr celebrated in the streets of Sadr City, bastion of his Mehdi Army. An aide hailed the end of a "barbaric siege" begun to help find a kidnapped U.S. soldier possibly being held by militiamen.

But Iraq's Sunni vice president said the move could spell an end to a lull in sectarian death squad violence, which the once dominant Sunni minority blames on the Mehdi Army.

"The Commander in Chief, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has ordered the lifting of all barriers and checkpoints to open roads and ease traffic in Sadr City and other districts of Baghdad," a statement from the premier's office said.

"Coalition forces have seen the order," U.S. spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said as troops began dismantling barriers and driving off in armored vehicles.

U.S. President George W. Bush's Republicans risk losing control of Congress next Tuesday when Americans vote in an election dominated by arguments about whether to keep 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as it descends toward all-out civil war.

Two more casualties announced on Tuesday took the U.S. death toll so far in October to 103, the highest in nearly two years, a spike from 71 in September that Vice President Dick Cheney blamed on al Qaeda and others exploiting the election campaign.

Bush has accepted a possible comparison between the rise in attacks in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week, and the Communist offensive in 1968 during Vietnam's Tet holiday, which dented American public support for that war.

As the checkpoints were being opened, a car bomb not far from Sadr City blasted a convoy of vehicles from a wedding party, killing 15 people, including four children, and wounding 19, Interior Ministry sources and police said.

Just north of the capital, gunmen erected roadblocks on the main highway to Saddam Hussein's mainly Sunni home province, police said. They kidnapped over 40 minibus passengers who came from two mostly Shi'ite towns in the area, Balad and Dujail.

FRICTION

U.S. and Iraqi troops have raided homes and snarled traffic across mainly Shi'ite eastern Baghdad for a week since Ahmed al-Taie, a U.S. military "linguist" of Iraqi origin, was kidnapped during a visit to relatives in the city last Monday.

There has been no word on his fate. Sadr's movement, a key element in the Shi'ite Islamist bloc that dominates Maliki's six-month-old coalition, had called on Sadr City's two million or so people to stay at home in protest at the checkpoint regime.

Maliki has chosen the past week to stake his claim to an independent say over security policy, publicly sparring with Bush and other U.S. officials, and rejecting their calls for him to set a timetable for disbanding militias like the Mehdi Army.

As Shi'ite and ethnic Kurdish leaders voice growing unease over U.S. rapprochement with the long rebellious Sunnis, Maliki came out strongly last week in defense of the Shi'ite militias.

However, apparently alarmed by events in Sadr City, Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said security in Baghdad had "noticeably improved" since the crackdown on the area.

"We were surprised at the decision, taken by the prime minister alone, to ... lift the checkpoints," he said in a statement. "It may mean freeing up the movement of terrorists."

An aide to Maliki said he had "discussed" the move with U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.S. military commander General George Casey. U.S. military spokesmen at first said they were unaware of it when the announcement was made.

"For days the people there have been suffering," the aide told Reuters. "It can't go on. Even if you have intelligence information, you can't punish millions of people."

Saddam heard a witness recall in court on Tuesday how Iraqi soldiers marched fellow Kurds from a bus, shot them and dumped their bodies in a ditch in the late 1980s. His trial for genocide against the Kurds was adjourned until next Tuesday.

On Sunday, he is due to hear the verdict and penalty -- possibly a death sentence -- in an earlier case, in which the 69-year-old ousted president is accused of crimes against humanity over the killing of Shi'ites from Dujail. Prosecutors have said, however, there could be a delay in that hearing.