A step back from the brink

THE two-week-long siege of Muqtada al-Sadr and his fighters in one of Shia Islam's holiest shrines may be coming to an end. On August 18th, in a surprise message reportedly signed by the fiery preacher himself, Mr Sadr told the National Conference, post-war Iraq's first big countrywide deliberative assembly, that he would accept its terms for peace. An aide said that Mr Sadr would leave the Imam Ali mosque, where he is holed up, and disarm his "Mahdi Army", but only if the American and Iraqi forces surrounding him first call a truce and pull back.

The declaration may be a stalling tactic. The interim government of Iyad Allawi demanded that Mr Sadr's militia disarm immediately or face a military strike. Sporadic explosions were still audible near the shrine on August 19th. Condoleezza Rice, America's national security adviser, warned that Mr Sadr could not be trusted. However, hopes were raised that the stand-off in the town of Najaf might end relatively peacefully.

Earlier, Iraq's defence minister had ratcheted up the pressure on Mr Sadr by vowing to storm the mosque. However, Mr Allawi's allies had also offered Mr Sadr a dignified way out. The National Conference had proposed that Mr Sadr evacuate the shrine and dissolve his "Mahdi Army".

Mr Allawi argues that militias like Mr Sadr's have no place in a modern state and so must disarm or be squashed. If Mr Sadr has indeed decided to back down, it will save Mr Allawi from having to make a ghastly choice: either to tolerate a loud challenge to his still-fragile authority, or to risk enraging Iraq's Shia majority by confronting him. Even the many Shia who detest Mr Sadr would be horrified by a battle inside a holy place.

The siege of the mosque had dominated discussions at the National Conference, which began on August 15th. On the first day, Mr Sadr's sympathisers, though a minority among the 1,100-odd delegates, managed to sway the crowd by calling for a halt to violence in the holy city.

With emotions running high, few delegates seemed willing to articulate the government's case. One woman from Najaf complained that the Sadrists were more of a threat to her city than "American cannons", but felt so intimidated by them that she afterwards refused to disclose her name. The conference organisers quickly put forward a resolution calling on the government to avoid violence in Najaf and elsewhere, thus defusing the issue.

The next day the anti-Sadrists had their turn. Speakers declared the need to uphold the rule of law, and that Najaf's shrines were no one's personal property. They put forward a resolution demanding that the Sadrists withdraw from the holy site, and that the Mahdi Army should ditch its guns and become a political party. The Sadrists were not given a chance to reply. The organisers cut the debate short and the resolution passed with a show of hands.

Whatever the procedural deficiencies of the debate, it was probably a rough approximation of what the delegates think, and may have increased the chances that Mr Sadr will stop shooting.

The conference's main business, meanwhile, was the selection of an interim parliament with the power to overrule the government. This has proven fraught. Some delegates complained that the system was rigged to favour the half-dozen largest Saddam-era opposition parties. These same groups were ineffectual when they dominated the Governing Council, the first post-Saddam Iraqi assembly.