Poll: Most Shiite Arabs scorn attacks on coalition

By The Associated Press

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Attempts by U.S. troops to arrest Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have heightened tensions with Iraq's Shiite majority at a time those troops already face the Sunni guerrillas' bloody insurgency.

Anger at the U.S. peaks among Sunni Arabs, especially those who live in the central Iraq province of Anbar, which includes Fallujah, where four contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated last week.

Shiites are less likely than Sunnis to say the invasion of Iraq was wrong, by about 30 percentage points. And only one in 10 Shiites says attacks on coalition forces are acceptable, compared with three in 10 Sunni Arabs and seven in 10 Sunnis in the Anbar province.

As for al-Sadr, a bare 1 percent of Iraqis name him as the national leader they trust most, ABC News said in reporting the poll.

The poll of 2,737 Iraqis 15 and older was conducted from Feb. 9-28 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, larger for subgroups like Shiite Arabs.

The poll was conducted by Oxford Research International for ABC News, the BBC, the German network ARD and the Japanese network NHK.

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