Arrest warrant for Iraqi cleric enrages Sunnis

BAGHDAD, Nov 17 (Reuters) An arrest warrant issued for Iraq's top Sunni Muslim cleric enraged his followers today, deepening an increasingly violent sectarian divide that Washington has pressed the Shi'ite-led government to heal.

The Islamic Party, the biggest Sunni political party in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's national unity government, said the move was the ''mercy bullet'' that would finish off a reconciliation plan that seeks to reach out to disaffected minority Sunnis.

At today's prayers, Sunni preachers condemned the warrant of arrest for Sheikh Harith al-Dari, which Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, a Shi'ite, dramatically announced yesterday night.

Bolani said Dari, who has backed insurgent attacks on US troops as ''legitimate resistance'', was wanted on suspicion of terrorism and stirring up sectarian division.

''If Harith al-Dari is arrested we will bring down the government and burn Baghdad,'' said Khalid Abdullah, a Sunni cleric in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Falluja.

He and fellow Sunni preachers accused the government of pursuing a sectarian agenda by seeking to arrest Dari while failing to curb death squads loyal to Shi'ite parties.

The government hastily sought to distance itself from the warrant for Dari, secretary general of the influential Muslim Clerics' Association, which immediately called on Sunni parties to pull out of the government in protest.

Dari is currently in Jordan.

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said the warrant had been issued by the judiciary, not the government, which is struggling to contain a three-year-old Sunni Muslim insurgency and sectarian bloodshed that has killed thousands.

''There are some cases that are under investigation and it is up to the Iraqi judiciary to take the decisions,'' Salih said.

US PRESSURE Maliki's government is under growing pressure from an impatient Bush administration to show progress in reaching a political accommodation with Sunnis that would allow 140,000 US troops to begin pulling out.

Salih told Arabiya television the government would call a meeting of moderate Iraqi leaders within the coming days to discuss the security situation.

''There is a real struggle going on that is getting deeper. It is not a sectarian struggle but a struggle between extremists and moderates. It is time for the moderates to come together.'' The US State Department says Dari's association is believed to have ties to and influence over insurgent groups, but today US diplomats had no comment on the arrest warrant. ''This is an Iraqi issue and the Iraqi government will deal with it,'' a US official in Baghdad told Reuters.

In response to charges that he supports al Qaeda, Dari says he does not back insurgents who target innocent civilians.

''I do not bestow legitimacy on anyone who harms our people or works against the interests of Iraq ... I bestow legitimacy on the Iraqi resistance that resists the occupation,'' he told al Jazeera today.

The grey-bearded Dari, normally clad in the traditional robes and chequered headdress of a tribal sheikh, said he had been expecting the arrest warrant for over a year.

REUTERS SY VV2212