Iraq's Shi'ite majority, casting off 25 years of repression by Saddam Hussein, celebrated a major pilgrimage in a frenzy of religious fervor on Tuesday, but many demanded U.S. troops get out of their country.
As the Muslim pilgrimage reached its climax in the holy city of Kerbala, the U.S. official charged with rebuilding war-ravaged Iraq received a warm welcome among northern Kurds, who were among Saddam's fiercest enemies.
In Baghdad, Shi'ites staged their second anti-American demonstration in two days, demanding the release of a religious leader who they accused U.S. troops of having arrested.
Aides of Mohammad al-Fartusi said he was later released, but there was no indication of why he had been held.
Hammering their chests and whipping their own backs until they bled, tens of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims swarmed through Kerbala, 70 miles south of Baghdad, on a pilgrimage long suppressed by Saddam.
Shi'ite leaders say a million or more people may flock to Kerbala for the climax of the pilgrimage -- Arbaiin -- which honors Imam Hussein, a grandson of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, who was killed in the city in 680 AD.
U.S. helicopters flew overhead but troops kept their distance on the outskirts, hoping to avoid any friction.
"Yes, yes to Islam, no to America, no to Israel, no to colonialism and no to occupation," some pilgrims chanted, in another indication of stormy weather ahead for the postwar administration headed by retired U.S. general Jay Garner.
Garner, who helped the Kurds establish autonomy in northern Iraq 12 years ago after the previous Gulf war, was warmly embraced by Jalal Talabani, veteran leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, when he landed by helicopter at Sulaimaniya.
FEELING AT HOME
"You always make me feel at home," Garner told Talabani, who heads one of two rival Kurdish political parties. "What you've done up here is going to become a model for the whole country."
The U.S. official visited the Sulaimaniya university, where crowds of cheering students gave him flowers and showered him with petals. "We trust you in our future," read one poster in the crowd.
Hiwa Abdullah, 30, a Kurdish university professor teaching Arabic, said: "I am very happy he is here. At least with the Americans we will no longer be afraid of chemicals and genocide."
Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988, killing about 5,000.
Garner flew in from Baghdad, where he began an assessment on Monday of the impact of the war, which caused thousands of casualties and left many communities without power, water and other essential services.
The United States plans to use revenue from sales of Iraqi oil to pay for much of the reconstruction, but some fellow members of the U.N. Security Council are balking at scrapping sanctions against the country despite the change of guard in Baghdad.
Russia and France insist that resolutions calling for Iraq to be declared free of weapons of mass destruction must be observed, and chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix was due to address the Security Council on the issue later on Tuesday.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko stressed the point. "Only if we receive an official conclusion from the inspectors can the U.N. Security Council pass a resolution on canceling sanctions," he said on Tuesday.
CHINA SEEKS END TO SANCTIONS
But China appeared to be leaning toward the U.S. position that sanctions should be lifted quickly. "We have ... advocated the early lifting of sanctions, but the relevant questions should be appropriately resolved within the U.N. framework," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference in Beijing.
President Bush sought to justify his invasion of Iraq on March 20 by accusing Saddam of hiding chemical and biological weapons. No confirmed trace of such weapons has yet been found.
In an interview broadcast by the BBC on Tuesday, Blix questioned the data used by the United States and Britain to justify attacking Iraq. "I think it's been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals built their case seemed to have been shaky," he said.
U.S. forces hunting fugitives from Saddam's deposed government said they had seized a former military commander, Mohammed Hamza al-Zubeidi.
Zubeidi was commander of the Central Euphrates region and Number 18 on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. He was the eighth person arrested from the list and was once one of the most senior members of Saddam's Baath party.
The fate of Saddam and most of his inner circle, including his sons Uday and Qusay, is still unknown.