An aide says the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s threat to unleash a full-scale war applies only to U.S.-led forces.

Last week, al-Sadr warned he would declare ‘open war’ if the government did not end its crackdown against his fighters.

Sheik Hassan Al-Edhari says al-Sadr is appealing to Iraqi soldiers and police ‘not to support the occupiers in combatting your brothers.’

But he says al-Sadr’s ‘threat of an open war until liberation’ is meant as ‘a war against the occupier.’
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