"As soon as words that Ayatollah Sistani had been told by hooligans and thugs to leave Najaf or he would be killed, thousands of people from nearby tribes and their leaders rushed to Najaf on Sunday to protect the Grand Ayatollah and threw out of the city the hooligans", Hojjatoleslam Sheykh Javad Rohani, a spokesman for Ayatollah Sistani’s office in Qom told the Persian service of the BBC.

By "gun and knives wielding hooligans and thugs", the clerics was referring to a hundred of armed men who, led by Hojjatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the 22-year-old son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Sadr, a former spiritual leader in Iraq assassinated by the deposed Saddam Hoseyn, had surrounded the residences of senior ayatollahs, ordering them to evacuate the city within 48 hours.

The British news agency Reuters quoted a Kuwait-based cleric as having said that Moqtada had sent him a message denying any involvement with the siege of Ayatollah Sistani or the killing, on Thursday, of Hojjatoleslam Abdolmajid al-Kho’i in the city's main shrine of Emam Ali, the Shi’as first emam.

Mr. Kho’i, considered as pro-Western, was living in exile in London for the past 12 years and had just returned to Iraq, aiming at organising the life of the Shi’ite, who had been oppressed by the collapsed Ba’thist regime.

Sistani, who is in his seventies, was not in his house when the warning came, but his son was, sources said.

"The siege has ended hopefully and order is returning to the city", Mr. Rohani told BBC, monitored by Iran Press Service in Paris.

Asked if he had any news about the Grand ayatollah’s whereabouts, Sheykh Javad Rohani said he was taken to a safe, but undisclosed place when the armed men arrived nine days ago. "Since then, we have no news of him", he said.

"At stake is the control of the Iraqi Shi’a who form the majority in this nation and in the likelihood of restoration of democracy, they could come out as the winners in any presidential election", one Iranian cleric pointed out, adding that Iran, the largest Shi’a nation, wanted to keep its position as the centre of the world’s 200 millions Shi’a community.

While Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, the leader of SAIRI has taken an anti-Coalition position; senior Iraqi ayatollahs like Grand Ayatollah Sistani, are considered as favourable.

It also says it will not recognise a US-installed interim administration for Iraq.

Hojjatoleslam Abdolaziz Hakim, a younger brother of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer, told a news conference on Monday that his group would not be going to the meeting of US officials and Iraqi political parties opposed to now toppled Saddam Hoseyn.

"We will not attend the meeting in Naseriyeh because the Iraqi people won't accept preparations for an administration imposed by foreigners. It is against Iraq's independence", the younger Hakim said, as a few hundreds demonstrators in the city protested to the meeting.

"We have informed the Americans of our decision", he added.

"We will not accept a foreign-imposed administration. Iraq needs an Iraqi interim government. Anything other than this tramples on the rights of the Iraqi people and will be a return to the era of colonialisation", Hakim said.

He said the Garner-run administration would violate agreements reached last year in London when Iraqi opposition groups "agreed that an all-Iraqi transitional government would replace Saddam Hoseyn, not a US-imposed one".

Hakim said his group did not believe the US and British forces should stay in Iraq "even for one day after the criminal Saddam regime is totally uprooted". But the Badr Brigade, the armed branch of SAIRI trained and equipped by Iranian militaries, would not fight the US-led coalition forces.

"Our policy, for the time being, is to avoid armed clashes with them", he said.

Asked whether he would be sending Badr corps fighters into Iraq, Hakim said: "We have troops inside Iraq, 10 times more than we have in Iran. We don't need to send any troops across the border."

Iranian experts put the number of the Badr forces at between 25.000 to 50.000, but other give it less than 20.000. ENDS IRAQI SHI’A 15403