EXCERPTS:

Talabani sees in his frigid reception in Washington an attempt to pre-empt a united Iraqi Kurdistan by stirring up trouble between him and Barzani, longstanding rivals whose reconciliation was brokered by the Americans to promote US influence in Iraq.

This would also please Arab governments, especially those with Kurdish minorities.

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Intelligence reports reaching Washington indicate that Iran has invested millions of dollars and substantial logistical resources in recent months to build up a force of 35,000 to 45,000 Iraqi fighters divided into units serving under Iranian officers who have taken up residence in Shiite towns and village of southern Iraq.

In this framework, the Badr militia has been reconstructed. Last summer, it was dispersed in battles fought with the Americans around Baquba with some help from the Iranian opposite guerrilla group Mujaheddin Khalq.

This new force, which has nothing to do with Sadrâas Mehdi Army militia, is based on one of the crack foreign brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which is manned mostly by Afghans and Pakistanis.

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Son of the Mahdi is better than Holy Martyr

 DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources have discovered that around mid-April, the radical cleric instructed his followers to adopt his own amendment to the Shiite Muslim prayer book. The blessing for Allah and the Prophet Mohammed includes one for the coming Mahdi, the Muslim messiah, and his son. Sadra's amendment inserted his own name into that blessing, so that it reads, the coming Mahdi and his son, Moqtada Sadr.

Never in modern times has a Shiite cleric been known to confer on himself the rank of messiah's son. The Four Grand Ayatollahs of Najef and also religious leaders in Tehran branded Sadra's act as outrageous heresy. The Mahdi, according to Shiite tradition, must be born of Imam Ali's family; no scion of the Sadr clan may usurp this honor.