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Najaf: Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr will consult senior religious leaders and disband his Mahdi Army militia if they instruct him to, a senior aide said on Monday.
The surprise announcement came on the day Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, in a television interview, ordered the Mahdi Army to disband or Al Sadr's followers would be excluded from Iraqi political life.
It was the first time Al Sadr has offered to disband the Mahdi Army, whose black-masked fighters are principal actors in Iraq's five-year-old war and the main foes of US and Iraqi forces in a recent upsurge in fighting.
Senior aide Hassan Zargani said Al Sadr would seek rulings from Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, as well as senior Shiite clergy based in Iran, on whether to dissolve the Mahdi Army, and would obey their orders.
That effectively puts the militia's fate in the hands of the reclusive Sistani, 77, a cleric revered by all of Iraq's Shiite factions and whose edicts carry the force of Islamic law, but who almost never intervenes in politics.
"Moqtada Al Sadr has ordered his offices in Najaf and Qom to form a delegation to visit Sistani in Najaf and [other leaders] in Qom to discuss disbanding the Mahdi Army," Zargani said.
"If they order the Mahdi Army to disband, Moqtada Al Sadr and the Al Sadr movement will obey the orders of the religious leaders," he said in Najaf.
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