Apr 6, 2007, 5:23 GMT

Amman - About 200 prominent Iraqi Sunni scholars ended a two-day annual meeting in Amman by backing 'resistance' as one of the legitimate means that should be adopted for ending the US-led occupation of Iraq, according to a statement published Friday.

'The conference stresses the need for working with all means, including the legitimate resistance, to expel the invasion forces and ensure laying down a timetable for their pullout,' the statement said.

The meeting, which was held outside Iraq for security reasons, also demanded 'the release of all detainees held by the government and occupation forces as a gesture of good faith towards reconciliation and building a new Iraq.'

The conference was sponsored by the Iraqi Endowments Society, an umbrella that includes the country's top Sunni scholars.

The organization was set up shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the country's Ministry of Religious Affairs was dissolved and replaced by separate establishments for Shiites, Sunnis and other religions.

The conference called for discarding all forms of 'ethnic and sectarian strife' and denounced 'all inhuman practices including kidnappings, assassinations, detentions, coercive migration and aggressions on worship establishments.'

Sunni leaders complained that at least 250 mosques were either destroyed or seized by Iran-backed Shiite militias which are affiliated with the Iraqi government.

The participants called for convening an 'expanded conference for all Iraqi scholars' including Shiite clerics with a view to 'halting the bloodshed' in Iraq and reinvigorating the Mecca Document that was reached by Sunni and Shiite leaders at the end of last year for ending sectarian violence.

The conference decided to set up the 'Iraq Scholars Council' and an 'Islamic Jurisprudence Complex' for issuing fatwas (judgements), a move designed to pre-empt opinions formed by takfir groups, which dub people as atheists.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur