"The four senior Shia Muslim clerics in Iraq have said that armed resistance is not the way to protest against the continued presence of US-led forces.
However, one of them, Sheikh Ali Najafi, said that
if foreign troops stayed too long, then the time for peaceful solutions would be over.
The clerics met at the home in Najaf of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
Despite their comments, Saturday has seen another day of violence in both Shia and Sunni areas of Iraq."
More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3608398.stmThis is in line with a scenario I posted earlier on another thread:
It is likely that Mahdi army (or elements of) will now continue low scale guerilla tactics instead of direct confrontation, and Sistani will have nothing to say about that.
If and when Negroponte tries to get away with no elections, or more likely partial, corrupt elections, Sistani will call the people on the streets, they will be shot and martyried by Allawi thugs and US troops, and then, with no peacefull solution available, Sistani will issue fatwa of national armed resistance to throw the occupiers out and declare Allawi enemy of the people and God. Then SCIRI (with it's Badr Corps), al-Dawa and other Shia parties that are now part of the governement will ditch Allawi, as will nearly all the IG armed troops and police forces, and join the resistance (peshmerga troops will propably go back home to Kurdistan and have none of the fight). Allawi flees the country or gets killed. UK, facing internal revolt, will try to negotiate with Sistani (and Iran?) a separate agreement that allows their troops to get out peacefully, leaving Shia militias (and Iran?) in controll of Basra and supply lines from Kuwait to north, and US alone to face inevitable humiliating MILITARY defeat, surrounded, getting little or no supplies and suffering horrible casualty rates.