Iraqi cleric avoids demands of Shi'ite rival

CAIRO, Nov 25 (Reuters) Iraqi Sunni Muslim cleric Harith al-Dari sidestepped today an invitation to give his followers specific orders not to kill Shi'ite Muslims.

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said yesterday that Dari and other Sunni leaders must issue religious rulings, or fatwas, to fellow minority Sunnis forbidding the killing of Shi'ites or membership of the al Qaeda group.

If Dari meets that and other conditions, Sadr said he would oppose the arrest warrant which the Iraqi government issued against Dari last week on suspicion of links to violence.

But Dari, who arrived in Cairo from Syria this week, said he refused to make a distinction between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, he said: ''We have condemned from the first months the killing of Iraqis ...

whether they were Arabs or Kurds, Muslims or non-Muslims, without going into details.'' He gave a list of occasions when his organisation, the Muslim Clerics Association, has issued specific condemnations of killings and resolutions it had voted for.

Dari blamed both the United States and successive Iraqi governments for the collapse of law and order in Iraq after the US invasion of 2003.

''The occupation administration is a failed administration, a stupid administration which can be summed up by saying that it has destroyed Iraq, state, people, institutions and resources.

''Its political operations have brought it today to a dead end.. It has brought Iraq to the edge of the abyss. The political process, under its various titles, took it from bad to worse, from failure to greater failure,'' he added.

Dari appealed to Arab governments to withdraw their recognition from the Iraqi government. ''I call on the Arab states and Egypt to stand up to this biased government, this sectarian government...this government which exploits sectarianism''.

REUTERS PDM BST1938