Iraq's amnesty provisions for people involved on the margins of the country's continued insurgency were signed into law yesterday, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told a Baghdad news conference.
Iraq's prime minister also invited renegade Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr to run in the country's first democratic elections in decades, as sporadic clashes rumbled on between US troops and his militiamen yesterday.
"Today I have signed the amnesty law and this law is directed against individuals who have committed minor crimes and who have not yet been apprehended or prosecuted," Allawi said.
The one-month amnesty covers people who possess or who have
dealt in light arms, possess explosive devices or materials and those who have shielded individuals or groups who are planning or financing terrorist acts, he added.
The law, approved by Allawi's cabinet and due to have been announced last month, would " allow citizens to rejoin civil society... instead of wasting their lives pointlessly towards a lost cause," the prime minister said.
Extending an olive branch, after US troops and Iraqi security forces had pounded Sadr's Mehdi Army for two days in the holy city of Najaf and Baghdad, Iyad Allawi invited the fiery cleric to stand for election.
The prime minister's US-backed interim government is due to disband when Iraq holds polls scheduled for Ianuary2005.
In the morning, US planes circled
over Najaf as gunfire, mortar and rocket blasts shook the deserted city centre before quiet returned by early afternoon.
An ultimatum for Sadr's militia to leave or face the consequences is set to expire at 6:00 pm (1400 GMT), police said.
Describing Najaf as "quite pitiful", Allawi dismissed most militiamen as less Sadr loyalist and more Saddam Hussein faithful, mixed with convicts released from jail by the former president ahead of the 2003 US-led invasion.
Pummelled in Sadr's spring uprising against foreign troops, terrified Najafis have begun fleeing their homes to escape the latest fighting.
The US military has said it has killed 300 insurgents in the city alone — although Sadr aides insist no more than nine militiamen have died. Allawi refused to be drawn on the number of people killed.
Combined tolls from medics put the number of dead at 74 and more than 200 wounded in fighting which spread to Baghdad and other southern Shia cities.
Five US marines have been killed and 12 wounded in Najaf province. Another US soldier was killed in an ambush in western Baghdad.
At least seven people were killed and 29 were wounded, including 10 women and children, in fighting yesterday between US troops and Shia Muslim militiamen inBaghdad's Sadr City, medics said.
Two hospitals said they had received seven dead and 29 wounded patients, including five women and five children, after the clashes in the Shia slum, a bastion of support for militia leader Moqtada Sadr.
One woman was among the dead, said anofficial at the Sadr general hospital.
Gunmen manned checkpoints around the northeastern district, refusing to let people in. An AFP correspondent said landmines had been strewn about on the streets as sporadic gunshots ricocheted through the neighbourhood.
But doctors expect provisional death tolls to go up. Ambulances have been barred from the centre where the worst fightinghas been concentrated.
Allawi said 1,200 militiamen have been captured, but Najaf police chief General Ghaleb el-Jazairi said he has no orders to arrest Sadr himself.
Echoing pledges from government officials in Baghdad, Jazairi ruled out any
possibility of truce talks, two months after a June ceasefire quelled Sadr's earlier uprising.
"We have received reinforcements and we have received new weapons. We will finish with them, control the city and no longer tolerate militias in Najaf."
In Baghdad, seven people were killed and nearly 30 wounded in the Shia slum of Sadr City as US patrols and Iraqi National Guard positions came under attack from Sadr's Mehdi Army, medics said.
US tanks smashed through makeshift barriers of bricks and burning tyres into Sadr City, coming under rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire from Mehdi Army fighters, anAFP photographer said.
Terrified local residents huddled in alley ways as they watched the clashes in themainstreets.
Allawi, recently returned from a Middle East tour aimed at drumming up support for his efforts to restore security in Iraq, said an amnesty for low-level insurgent supporters had been signed into law.
The law, due to have been announced in July, would "allow citizens to rejoin civil society... instead of wasting their lives pointlessly towards a lost cause," the prime minister said.
Another militant group holding a Turkish truck driver threatened to kill him within 48 hours unless his employer abandons the country, according to footage shown by Turkey's NTVchannel.