Thousands of Iraqis decry 'humiliating' US pact

Thousands of followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched on Friday against a pact letting U.S. forces stay in Iraq until 2011, toppling an effigy of President George W. Bush where U.S. troops once tore down a statue of Saddam Hussein.

Demonstrators chanted and waved Iraqi flags in Baghdad's Firdos square, where U.S. forces pulled down a statue of the ousted Iraqi dictator when they took the city in 2003.

A sign pinned to the Bush effigy -- which was later pelted with plastic bottles and torched along with U.S. and British flags -- reflected the mood of the protestors: "The security agreement is shameful and humiliating."

Legitimize occupation

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), approved by the Iraqi cabinet on Sunday after nearly a year of hard-nosed negotiations, would govern the status of some 150,000 U.S. troops when their U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

Parliament is expected to vote next week on the measure -- which would require all foreign forces to depart Iraqi cities and towns by the end of June 2009 and to withdraw completely from Iraq by the end of 2011.

It has drawn fire from Sadr's followers, who are against signing any pact that would legitimize the U.S. occupation.

"No, No, to the agreement!" the crowds chanted beneath a huge banner with a picture of bloody, cuffed hands reaching out from a map of Iraq and three keys labeled with American, Israeli, and British flags.

Other banners in English read "No for the security agreement that makes Iraq a prisoner and without sovereignty" and "Occupied forces must leave Iraq now."

Shield of Iraq

The Sadrist sheikh Abelhadi al-Mohammedawi, led the thousands of protestors, virtually all of them men, in Friday prayers before reading a statement from Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran.

"If they don't leave the country I am going to be with you to make them leave in a way that suits you, as long as it doesn't go against the religion," Sadr said in the statement.

"And if they leave the country and you fear that the enemy coming from outside will transform your land into a battlefield, I and my followers will be a shield for Iraq."

Huge portraits of the young, turbaned Sadr glared down at the crowd from buildings lining Saadun street, a main thoroughfare leading to the square, as Iraqi army soldiers took up positions on rooftops and patrolled the edges of the protest.

"We are following the call of Moqtada al-Sadr to pray and demonstrate against the accord and against the occupation," said Nawfal Faraj, 36, a civil servant.

"This agreement is not clear. It allows the occupation forces to stay in Iraq."

Yes to unity

The Sadrists had called on both Sunnis and Shiites to attend the demonstration and Sunni Imam Quteiba al-Nadawi led the crowd in chants of "Yes, yes to unity... Yes, yes to Iraq... No to submission, No to this agreement!"

Sheikh Talal al-Saadi, the imam of Baghdad's revered Kadhimiyah shrine and one of several clerics in the crowd, said he too had heeded Sadr's call to demonstrate against the "humiliating" agreement.

"The agreement allows the occupiers to stay three years in Iraq, while (president-elect Barack) Obama wants to withdraw them within 16 months. We want the Iraqi government to be patient and to wait for Obama's order," he said.

The pact has been loudly debated on the floor of the Iraqi parliament in recent days, where the 30-member Sadrist bloc has sought to derail it with legislative manoeuvres, shouting and desk-pounding.

"We are trying to convince the MPs to vote against the agreement and I know that a lot of them, deep in their hearts, are against it," MP Falah Shanshal told AFP on the sidelines of the demonstration.

But the SOFA -- which enjoys the support of the assembly's large Shiite and Kurdish blocs -- appears likely to win the simple majority needed for approval in the 275-member body.