Mahdi Army will have no foreign fighters – Sadrists

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Sadrists have no plans to include foreign fighters in its Mahdi Army militia after ending the freeze on it if U.S. forces did not pull out of Iraq, a spokesman for the Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc said on Saturday. “Mass media reports about brining in foreign fighters to resist U.S. occupation if a freeze on the Mahdi Army is lifted were totally incorrect,” Sheikh Salah al-Obaidi was quoted in a statement received by IraqiNews.com news agency. “The freeze on the Mahdi Army will end only if the occupation forces failed to observe the status of forces agreement (SOFA) and exit Iraq by the end of this year,” he said. Sheikh Obaidi noted that the decision to end the freeze is exclusively up to Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr. “A statement would be made then to indicate the tasks and who would undertake them only against the occupiers and with pure Iraqi hands,” he noted. Obaidi, in a statement by Sadr he read out on April 9 before a mass rally of supporters in a demonstration calling for the exit of U.S. troops, had said if the U.S. army is not out of Iraq, the Mahdi Army would be back to escalate armed as well as peaceful resistance. U.S. combat forces had totally withdrawn from Iraq by the end of August 2010 in line with the SOFA deal signed between Baghdad and Washington in 2008. The remaining forces, estimated at 50,000 soldiers, are to continue pullout by the end of 2011.  AmR (TS)/SR 1795