BEIRUT, Lebanon - A senior Iraqi born Shiite cleric predicted Monday that terrorist attacks on U.S. interests worldwide would increase because of Muslim anger at the American abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said, however, that most Islamic anger is aimed at the Bush administration and not the American people. He criticized attacks on innocent civilians, including the Sept. 11 al-Qaida strikes.
Fadlallah said Bush's apology for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was "inaccurate" because the president blamed a few individual soldiers, and not military commanders and other U.S. leaders. The cleric called for the resignations of Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"The people who carried out these acts were acting on the basis of orders and under the supervision of intelligence" agencies and interrogators, said Fadlallah, one-time spiritual guide of the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
"This is something that cannot be considered an independent act."
"These acts show the administration does not believe in human rights," said Fadlallah.
"The current American administration is going from one mistake to another. Therefore, the issue of the torture of the (Iraqi) prisoners is probably not the last mistake we will see," Fadlallah said. "We consider the occupation to be one of the highest forms of torture."
He spoke at his office in the southern suburbs of Beirut to a group of American editors on a fact-finding trip with the Washington-based International Reporting Project.
Bush told Arab television audiences last week that the prisoner abuse doesn't represent American values and was an aberration for the U.S. military.
Fadlallah said the fallout in the Arab world could be severe.
"I believe these acts encourage terrorism and don't do away with it," he said. "And I'm not talking about the American people. We believe there are American people who have values and intellect ... and the administration is not representing these values. The American people should elect someone who represents their values."
Fadlallah was the spiritual guide of Hezbollah in the 1980s, when the militant group was blamed for kidnapping Westerners and bombing American targets in Beirut. In 1983, Shiite suicide bombers destroyed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen.
The 69-year-old Fadlallah now operates as the top Shiite cleric in Lebanon, which is about 40 percent Shiite and maintains a delicate political and religious balance with a population that includes Sunni Muslims, as well as Druse and Christians.
Fadlallah is no longer associated with Hezbollah, which takes its directions from Iran. The cleric believes the holy city of Najaf in Iraq is the true center of Shiite power.
Fadlallah, a Lebanese, was born in Najaf while his father, also a cleric, was living there.
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