BAGHDAD: Iraq's fiercely anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has warned that US military trainers will be targets if they stay in the country beyond a year-end deadline for American troops to leave.
The statement from Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia fought US troops until 2008, follows a deal by Iraqi leaders to allow Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to negotiate with the United States on whether to keep trainers in Iraq after the deadline.
Sadr followers have sent mixed messages on that, but any deal to keep US troops in Iraq, even as trainers, remains a sensitive issue in Baghdad and Washington eight years after the US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
"Whoever stays in Iraq will be treated as an unjust invader and should be opposed with military resistance," Sadr said in a statement published on a pro-Sadr website on Saturday.
"A government which agrees for them to stay, even for training, is a weak government."
Copyright Reuters, 2011
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