Radical Shiite cleric al-Sadr says Arabs meeting in Syria must support resistance

Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on Arab leaders meeting in Syria to voice their support for Iraq's "resistance" To what he calls foreign occupation.

Al-Jazeera television has shown a brief clip of an interview with the Mahdi Army militia leader. The broadcast is the first word from the reclusive Iraqi cleric since Iraq's government launched a crackdown against Shiite militia violence in the southern oil port of Basra earlier this week. (AP)