Hard Shiite Accepts Peace Proposal

Militant Shiite leader Muktada al-Sadr, who is leading the Iraqi armed insurgents, accepted another peace proposal, and the deteriorating Iraq situation faced a new aspect.

British BBC internet version on April 13 reported that al-Sadr verbally agreed on the proposal of dismissing his militia corps and transferring it to the legal political party.

In relation to this, the spokesman of al-Sadr revealed that the militia corps dissipated the armed forces at the police station and official buildings in the three southern Iraqi cities of Najaf, Kupa, Kerbala, which they dominated last week.

On April 11, seven Chinese kidnapped by Iraqi armed forces were all freed on April 12. However, the three Japanese hostages incident has not yet been settled.

Also, eight Russia energy company members and two Czech reporters were kidnapped. Foreigners kidnapping and missing incidents in Iraq are going on.

Sung-Won Joo swon@donga.com