NAJAF, Iraq – Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr accepted a peace plan yesterday that would disarm his militia and remove them from their hideout in a revered shrine, raising hopes of resolving a crisis that has threatened to undermine the fledgling interim government.

But Mr. al-Sadr has a record of contradictory statements, and aides said he still wanted to negotiate details of the deal to end two weeks of fighting between his forces and U.S.-led troops.

The agreement was announced at the National Conference in Baghdad, which had sent a delegation to negotiate with Mr. al-Sadr.

The conference, a gathering of more than 1,000 prominent Iraqis that was seen as an important milestone on the country’s path to democracy, spilled into an unscheduled fourth day so it could choose members of an interim National Council. The council is to act as a watchdog over the interim government until elections in January.

Disputes persisted at the conference throughout the day over how to choose 81 elected members of the council, with small parties complaining they were being strong-armed by the large factions into accepting their slate of candidates.

A planned vote to affirm a slate of 81 candidates was called off at the last minute. The final 19 members of the 100-member council will be members of the former U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, who were left out of the interim government.

Mr. al-Sadr’s loyalists and a combined American-Iraqi force have been fighting for nearly two weeks throughout Najaf, battling in the vast graveyard and in the streets of its Old City.

A wall surrounding the Imam Ali Shrine, where the terrorists have holed up, was reportedly chipped in the fighting, and any damage to the gold-domed mosque itself would infuriate the world’s 120 million Shiite Muslims.

The drawn-out fighting, which had spread to other Shiite areas, has already burnished Mr. al-Sadr’s reputation among poor, grassroots Shiites at the expense of more senior – and more moderate – clerics and hampered the government’s efforts to quell a separate Sunni insurgency.

Iraqi defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, said yesterday afternoon the government could send Iraqi forces to raid the shrine by the end of the day. The prime minister, Ayad Allawi, issued a statement accusing the terrorists of mining the area around the shrine.

Hours later, Mr. al-Sadr’s office sent a message to the conference, saying he would accept the gathering’s peace proposal, which demands his militia drop its arms, withdraw from the shrine, and transform itself into a political party in exchange for amnesty.

Sheik Hassan al-Athari, an official at Mr. al-Sadr’s Baghdad office, said the cleric wanted to negotiate how the plan would be implemented and to ensure his rebels would not be arrested. Mr. al-Sadr aide Ahmed al-Shaibany said American forces must first stop attacking.

Gun battles, explosions, and other clashes continued to plague Najaf even after the agreement was announced. The American military says the clashes have killed hundreds of rebels, though the insurgents deny that. Eight American soldiers and at least 40 Iraqi police have been killed as well. As of Tuesday, 943 American service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department.

At the Abu Ghraib prison, which was the center of a scandal over allegations that American prison guards abused Iraqi detainees, American military police shot and killed two detainees and wounded five others during a massive brawl yesterday, the military said.

Several detainees attacked an inmate with rocks and tent poles in a fight that soon encompassed 200 people, said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, the American military’s spokesman for detention operations in Iraq. The military decided to use lethal force because one detainee risked being killed by fellow inmates, he said. Abu Ghraib is west of Baghdad. In the northern city of Mosul, a mortar round slammed into a busy market, killing five civilians and wounding 21, authorities said.

Ongoing fighting between American forces and Mr. al-Sadr’s terrorists in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City killed four Iraqis and wounded 24 others, Health Ministry officials said.

The conference was considered a top target for insurgents, and a mortar round hit the roof of the nearby Foreign Ministry building, causing no damage or injuries. The foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said he believed the mortar was aimed at the fortified enclave where the conference was held. Many delegates said yesterday they were fed up with Mr. al-Sadr, and later in the day, Mr. Shaalan said the government could raid the shrine within hours.

Meanwhile, a terrorist group said it has kidnapped a missing Western journalist and would kill him if American forces did not leave Najaf within 48 hours, Al Jazeera reported.

A group calling itself the Martyrs Brigade released a video to the pan-Arab television station that purported to show Micah Garen, who had been snatched off the streets of the southern city of Nasiriyah on Friday along with his Iraqi translator, Amir Doushi. In the video, the kidnappers threatened to kill Garen within two days.