Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 18 April 2004 — A Sunni group yesterday made common cause with fiery Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr as captors of a US soldier demanded the release of fighters being held by US-led forces in Iraq in exchange for his life.

Mohamed Ayash Al-Kubaisi, representative of the Muslim Clerics Association, told Al-Arabiya television that all Iraqis resisting the US-led occupation were working toward the same goal, including Sadr.

“We support him (Sadr) and he supports us in this resistance. We are in one boat and are responsible for protecting this boat,” Kubaisi said, adding his group has issued fatwas for ending the occupation.

“Iraqis are aware that it’s not in our interests to compete for sectarian gains. The Shiite resistance... strengthens our will as we are both fighting the same enemy.”

Sadr’s supporters in Najaf said mediation efforts with the US-led coalition had failed and they feared American troops were poised to attack.

“Mediations with the US side have been halted because the mediators have told us the Americans are putting obstacles toward finding solutions to the crisis and the situation is getting worse,” Qais Al-Khazaali, the head of Sadr’s office told reporters in Najaf.

“We are expecting the Americans to attack Najaf any moment now,” he said.

In mostly Sunni Fallujah, a leading American official, Richard Jones, joined week-old peace talks with city leaders, senior US spokesman Dan Senor told a news conference.

“We are hopeful about their intentions,” he said. “Our overriding question is can they deliver and, if so, can they do so expeditiously? Time is running out.”

One resident in the city of 300,000 told a reporter: “For the first time in days, Fallujah is completely calm.”

US Marines launched a crackdown in the city on April 5 after the gruesome killings of four American private security guards, ambushed in the town the previous week. Some 600 residents, including women and children, were killed in the US attack.

US officials want their killers brought to justice and the disarming of an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 fighters in the town.

Kidnappers freed two Japanese hostages here, a day after the captured US soldier was paraded in footage on an Arab television channel. The two Japanese, Jumpei Yasuda and Nobutaka Watanabe, were unshaven and looked tired but in good health as they were handed over to Japanese diplomats at Baghdad’s Umm Al-Qura Mosque.

The captors of US Private Keith Maupin, seized after an attack on a road convoy west of Baghdad last week, released a videotape Friday that showed him surrounded by masked gunmen.

Maupin, one of two missing US soldiers, identified himself in a soft voice on the videotape.

On the political front, the European Union said a new UN resolution could get the bloc involved in Iraq, despite the bitter opposition of some of its members to the US-led war.

EU foreign ministers, at a two-day meeting in Tullamore, Ireland, called for the United Nations to take a pivotal role in running Iraq when the coalition hands over power to an interim administration at the end of June.

“We are agreed that a strong UN role is an essential element for the political transition process,” Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen told a news conference after the talks.