IRAQ

Robert Fisk: Robert Fisk-Live interview: Iraq power handover 'a fraud'

TONY JONES: What role then do you think the old Ayatollahs, particularly Sistani, are going to play as this situation starts to play itself out around Najaf?

ROBERT FISK: Well, Sistani, you see, still hopes that if there is a future administration the Shiites will basically run it.

They are the majority population.

They are 60 per cent of the population of Iraq.

He doesn't want to do anything which is going to allow the Sunnis to come back and run the country as they did under Kassim, Saddam, the Ba'ath Party and so on.

There's going to come a time and he's beginning to speak much more harshly - when he's not going to be able any longer to hold back an overall Shi'ite resistance against the United States.

He's not going to be able to do it.

If the Americans do try to enter the holy city of Najaf, they're in the suburbs at the moment but they're nowhere near the shrines, if they do try to enter, then I think Sistani will have to call for a war against them.

He'll be finished if he doesn't.