BAGHDAD, Aug. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has vowed to defeat militia across Iraq who refused to disarm, after calm returned to the holy city of Najaf following a ceasefire between militia and US-backed forces.

    "We will confront these militiamen with force... There are some elements in the Mehdi Army still insisting on complicating the situation in Iraq outside Najaf," Allawi told the country's official television al-Iraqiya late Saturday.

    "The government will not allow any private armed groups to operate outside Najaf regardless of whether they are al-Qaida groups, al-Zarqawi groups, bin Laden or the so-called Mehdi Army,"the prime minister said.

    Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his army to withdraw from Najaf and the neighboring Kufa on Friday following a five-point peace plan brokered by Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

    Sistani's peace plan did not include disarming militia in Baghdad's slum of Sadr City or other southern Shiite cities, where Sadr's followers also mounted armed resistance against foreign troops and Iraqi security forces. Enditem