IRAQI PM THREATENS TO BAN MUQTADA AL SADR IF HE DOESN'T DISBAND HIS ARMY

Who is the Iraqi Prime Minister trying to fool? He says he will ban Muqtada al-Sadr from the Iraqi government if Sadr doesn't disband his Mahdi Army.

Doesn't the Iraqi PM know that in the recent fight for Basra 1,000 of his Iraqi Army members "cut and ran" rather than stand and fight against the Mahdi Army and the US Army?

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned in an interview broadcast Monday that radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement will be sidelined from politics unless its feared militia is disbanded.

Sadr group to be barred if militia not disbanded: Iraq PM
by Jay Deshmukh 41 minutes ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080407/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrest

The prime minister's comments to CNN follow two weeks of fighting between Sadr's Mahdi Army Shiite militia and the security forces that have killed hundreds and raised doubts over the capabilities of army and police units.
"A decision was taken ... that they no longer have a right to participate in the political process or take part in the upcoming elections unless they end the Mahdi Army," Maliki said in an interview with the television network.
Iraqi and US forces have been fighting Shiite militiamen, mostly from the Mahdi Army, since Maliki ordered a crackdown on "lawless gunmen" on March 25 in the southern city of Basra.
The fighting spread to other Shiite areas of Iraq, including Sadr City, the Mahdi Army's Baghdad bastion, from where according to the US military "criminals" have since the crackdown been launching rocket and mortar attacks on the fortified Green Zone.
Two US soldiers and two US government employees have been killed in the attacks on the Green Zone, seat of the Iraqi government and the US embassy, while another soldier was killed Sunday by a rocket at an east Baghdad US base.
Iraqi officials said fighting raged again overnight in Sadr City, killing three people and wounding 36.
The clashes, in which 20 people died on Sunday, has brought the impoverished district of two million people to a standstill, with the main market burnt out, water in short supply and electricity non-existent, residents said.
The fighting comes just two days before a massive anti-American protest on Wednesday in Sadr City called by Sadr.
The Sadr group expects at least a million protesters to attend the demonstration on the April 9 fifth anniversary of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime by invading US-led forces.
Maliki had initially given militiamen 72 hours when he launched the Basra crackdown and later offered a new April 8 deadline to local residents of the southern city to hand over medium and heavy weaponry in return for cash.
The fighting subsided on March 30 when Sadr called his fighters off the streets, but has continued sporadically in Basra, where eight people were killed overnight in a blast that destroyed a house, and in Sadr City.
Maliki told CNN he was determined to pursue militias across the country, including those in Sadr City.