Shia Muslims protest at arrest of cleric as interim leader arrives in Baghdad

Jay Garner, the retired general appointed by the Pentagon to run Iraq until an interim government is established, arrived in Baghdad yesterday amid mounting anger from the city's Shia Muslims.

Declaring his priority was to restore supplies of water and electricity to the city, General Garner, 65, toured one of the city's beleaguered hospitals, and assured doctors: "We will help you but it is going to take time." As he became acquainted with the Iraqi capital, thousands of Shia Muslims marched through the city centre in protest at the reported arrest of Sheikh Mohammed al-Fartusi, a senior Shia cleric, by American troops in a Shia district. US Central Command declined to comment.

After touring the city, General Garner was taken to Saddam Hussein's Faw Palace, a grand, yellow stone structure surrounded by a moat.

General Garner, who will report to the Central Command chief General Tommy Franks, said he intended to complete his work and leave as soon as possible but would not be drawn on when that might be. "We will be here as long as it takes. We will leave fairly rapidly," he said.

Aside from repairing the infrastructure, his most immediate challenge will be to keep the peace with – and between – Iraq's political, religious and ethnic factions.

That task will be brought into sharp focus today, as hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims gather for a festival in the holy city of Karbala. Shia leaders have called for political demonstrations throughout the event, which runs until Thursday.

In southern Iraq, a team of forensic pathologists was assisting an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of two British soldiers whose bodies were found in buried in the desert.

Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, and Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24 may have been shot shortly after being ambushed on 23 March, military sources believe.

Meanwhile, Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, will appear before the Security Council in New York today, as it debates whether to resume inspections in Iraq.

In the absence of any discoveries of banned weapons by the Allied forces, Mr Blix will be asked by some members of the Security Council to resume his operations, and is likely to signal his agreement.

Further weapons inspections may be needed if sanctions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War are to be lifted and the country is allowed to resume unfettered oil exports.

TRUTH OF JOURNALIST'S DEATH 'WITHHELD'

The chief executive of ITN has accused the Ministry of Defence and the US military of withholding information that could explain why the journalist Terry Lloyd was killed. Stewart Purvis said the military had consistently blocked attempts to get to the truth of why Mr Lloyd and his colleagues Fred Nerac and Hussein Osman came under fire from Allied forces outside Basra last month. He also accused Colin Powell of reneging on a promise to Mr Nerac's wife to investigate the incident.