A top Iraqi Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has expressed "great unease" about the ten-week-old US occupation of the country and demanded that the US allow Iraqis to rule themselves, The Washington Post reported today.

The newspaper said Sistani issued his demand in written responses to its questions.

Sistani, who is viewed by US officials as a crucial force for moderation in turbulent postwar Iraq, stopped far short of demanding a US withdrawal, the report said.

But his words seemed to signal growing anxiety among the country's religious leadership over the direction of the US occupation, according to The Post.

"We feel great unease over their goals, and we see that it is necessary that they should make room for Iraqis to rule themselves by themselves without foreign intervention," the paper quoted Sistani as saying from his home in the southern city of Najaf.

His replies, conveyed Saturday, were put in written form by his son and spokesperson, Mohammed Rida Sistani, who acts on his father's authority, the paper said.

Echoing other Shiite clerics, many of whom have become increasingly vocal in their denunciations of Western influence, Sistani also warned that the biggest threat facing the Arab country is "the obliteration of its cultural identity," the report said. -Sapa-AFP.