Police chief of Iraqi city moved after mosque attacks

BASRA, Iraq, June 18 (Reuters) Basra's police chief has been transferred to a new post in the Interior Ministry, Iraqi officials said today, just days after militants destroyed two Sunni mosques in the southern Shi'ite city.

Major-General Mohammed Hamadi has been locked in a dispute with the governor of Basra province, a member of the small but locally powerful Fadhila party, who has accused him of inefficiency and refusing to obey orders.

The provincial governing council has been in negotiations with the central government in Baghdad for months to resolve the dispute, a source in the council told Reuters, but the bombing of the two Sunni mosques was seen as ''the last straw''.

The mosques were destroyed at the weekend in apparent retaliation for the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra north of Baghdad.

Hamadi told Reuters he was being transferred to Baghdad to become a director general in the Interior Ministry. He is to be replaced by Major-General Jalil Khalaf.

''There was political pressure on the governing council and the ministry for me to be transferred to another position,'' he said.

The source in the governing council said the police chief had never got on with the provincial governor, partly because he was seen as aligned to the Dawa party of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a rival to Fadhila in Basra, where Shi'ite factions are fighting for control of its oil revenues.

REUTERS SG RAI2305