Sadr meets Turkish leaders in Ankara to discuss Iraqi political process

No statement was made following the Iraqi leader's separate closed to the press meetings with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

 

Sadr traveled from Iran to Turkey with several senior leaders of his movement on the visit, which follows an earlier delegation that went to Ankara six months ago to lay the groundwork for the trip, the Shiite cleric's senior aide Haidar al-Turfi told AFP.Â

 

Sadr was due to meet a delegation from the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf and hold discussions with the Turkish side about the situation in Iraq and its future, Turfi added.Â

 

"The political process is increasingly normalized in Iraq... He is here for political consultations with the Turkish authorities on these matters," a foreign ministry official told Reuters.

 

Turkey has sought contacts with all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, keen that stability be established in its southern neighbor.

 

Turfi is the first senior official from Sadr's movement to say directly that the anti-U.S. cleric has been in Iran. His followers have always said he was in hiding in Iraq, while the U.S. military has long said he was living in Iran.

Sadr, said to be aged in his 30s, gained wide popularity among Shiites in Iraq in the months after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and in 2004 as his Mahdi Army militia battled U.S. troops in two bloody revolts.

 

But he disappeared after a public appearance at an Iraqi mosque in June 2007 and has since issued statements through senior aides and spokesmen.

 

In August 2008, he suspended the activities of his Mahdi Army, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, following major U.S. and Iraqi assaults on its strongholds in Baghdad and southern Iraq in the spring of that year.