U.S. seizes weapons cache in Iraq

Baghdad - U.S. forces announced Monday the seizure of a large cache of weapons as Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric demanded the next legislature be elected, denying the United States crucial backing for its plan to let regional caucuses select a provisional assembly.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani's hardened stand came as hundreds of protesters clashed with British troops in a southern city and an ongoing purge of Saddam Hussein's Baath party members reportedly removed 28,000 Iraqis from their jobs.

Under the U.S. plan, a transitional Iraqi assembly — to be chosen by regional committees — would select an interim government ahead of full elections in 2005.

But al-Sistani, who met Sunday with officials from the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, said the U.S. plan would give birth to an illegitimate Iraqi government.

"This will, in turn, give rise to new problems and the political and security situation will deteriorate," al-Sistani said in a statement released by his office Sunday.

Al-Sistani is the spiritual leader of most of Iraq's majority Shiites, and has the power to influence their thinking.

Al-Sistani also said only an elected legislature can ratify the presence of U.S.-led coalition troops beyond July 1, a designated date for the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis.

Drafting a new plan to accommodate al-Sistani's views would make Washington look like it is allowing its Iraq policies to be held hostage to the wishes of one man. It also would further anger Iraq's minority Sunnis, who had dominated politics in Iraq for decades and are bristling at the attention given now to the Shiites they traditionally oppressed.

The occupying forces faced other headaches on Sunday. In the southern city of Amarah, waves of protesters rushed British troops guarding the city hall, a day after clashes there killed six protesters and wounded at least 11.

The British drove the crowd back from the compound, which also houses the U.S.-led occupation force and the 1st Battalion of Britain's Light Infantry. Homemade bombs exploded during the melee, but no injuries were reported.

Demonstrators sent a representative to talk to British and Iraqi officials, who promised them 8,000 jobs, according to witnesses. But protesters said a similar promise made weeks before had not been fulfilled.

The U.S. Department of Defense raised the American death toll since the start of the war to 495 on Sunday after the death of a 23-year-old soldier from a heart attack in Qatar.

On Monday, the U.S. military said in a statement that U.S. soldiers uncovered a "large weapons cache" on Friday with the help of an Iraqi in Ramadi, a town west of Baghdad.

The Iraqi led the troops to a house, where they found dozens of rocket-propelled grenades and a handful of launchers, nearly 220 pounds of explosives, 16 remote controlled homemade bombs and two surface-to-air missiles, the statement said.

It said a mosque official also alerted police to a suspicious vehicle on Friday in the northeastern town of Ba'qubah, which turned out to be a car bomb packed with 250 pounds of plastic explosives and three artillery rounds.

The device was defused by U.S. troops.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands more former high-level Baathists are set to lose their jobs in ongoing purges, said Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, a favorite of the Pentagon who heads a committee aimed at ridding Iraq of the influence of Saddam's party. About 28,000 have already lost their jobs, he said.

The United States dissolved and banned the Baath party in May, a month after U.S. forces swept into Baghdad to remove Saddam from power and end 35 years of the party's rule. -- Associated Press

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