A Sunni Arab politician claimed on Tuesday that two insurgent groups were ready to open talks with the government and eventually lay down their arms and join the political process.
The disclosure by Ayham al-Samarie was the first time any Iraqi politician has publicly acknowledged contacting Iraq's militants. It also opened a new front in ongoing efforts to counter the Sunni-dominated insurgency wracking much of Iraq since 2003. They came at a time of growing complaints by Sunni Arab groups that counterinsurgency operations by US-backed Iraqi forces are unjustly targeting innocent members of the community.
It was not possible to independently verify al-Samarie's claims and the government would not comment on them.
A senior Shiite legislator, Hummam Hammoudi, said last week that Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government has opened indirect channels of communication with some insurgent groups, exchanging messages through intermediaries to convince them to lay down their arms.
Al-Samarie, a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology who has a dual US-Iraqi citizenship, said the two groups were the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of Mujahedeen, or holy warriors. He said he had not met any of their field commanders but began contacting their political leaders about five months ago. He did not name them.
Speaking to The Associated Press in an interview, he said the two factions represented more than 50 percent of the "resistance," the term used by many in Iraq to exclude militant groups working with Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of Al Qaeda in Iraq and others who target civilians as well as Iraq's security forces.
The Islamic Army in Iraq has claimed responsibility for several attacks and is believed to be responsible for the kidnapping and slaying of several of the more than 200 foreigners taken hostage over the past 18 months. Little has been heard from the Mujahedeen Army in recent months, but it claimed responsibility for scores of attacks in 2003 and early last year.
Al-Samarie, a former electricity minister in Iraq's two former postwar interim governments, said there was no agreement for the two groups to lay down their weapons or declare a cease-fire, but that a truce with a limited duration could possibly be arranged to prove their goodwill after talks get underway.
"We told them that no one knows what you want. You say you want the occupier to leave Iraq but what do you want after that? You must have a political agenda. You must come out to the political arena and make clear what you want'," said al-Samarie.
"They set no conditions and we agreed with them that the time has come for them to come out," he added, but would not disclose who else was involved. Al-Samarie also announced the news about the two groups on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite TV station, saying their representatives would be part of an umbrella group he is forming.
Several Sunni Arab organizations and political groups, like the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, have long been suspected of having links with the insurgency.
"The new thing here is that the resistance has decided to come out in person rather than have others speaking on its behalf," said al-Samarie, who spoke at his home in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood.
He said he had run the idea of bringing insurgency factions into the political fold past several US officials during a visit to Washington last month.
He claimed to have discussed it with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and senior State Department official Richard Jones, who served as a deputy to Iraq's former US governor L. Paul Bremmer. He said he was encouraged by their reaction.
"The Americans are very practical. They don't want the loss in Iraq of their sons and daughters to continue," said al-Samarie. "I don't think we will have a problem with the multinational force either," he said, alluding to the US-dominated, 160,000-strong multinational force in Iraq.
He said he had sometime ago informally told members of al-Jaafari's Shiite-dominated government of his intentions to contact the insurgents.
"I have received various reactions from them, but none were too strong," he said. There has been no public reaction from the government to his announcement on al-Arabiya.
"I think they'll bless this move. The government must take this initiative seriously and start talking to these brothers (from the insurgency) to solve Iraq's problems," he said, adding that the government was divided over whether contacts should be made with insurgents.
Laith Kuba, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, declined to comment on the report, saying he only became aware of it through the media.
A spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shiite political party and a key part of the governing alliance, would only say that his party was prepared to talk to any group - except terrorists and remnants of Saddam's regime.
He said representatives of the two insurgency groups would attend a meeting of his new umbrella group later this month in restive Anbar province, and that he planned to ask Iraqi and US military authorities to guarantee their safety. |
Iraq's former electricity minister, a member of the transitional government set up after the 2003 US-led invasion, was arrested today on corruption charges after he surrendered, an official said. Ayham al-Samarie, a dual Iraq-US citizen and Sunni Arab political figure, is one of the five ministers in the former government against whom arrest warrants were issued for massive corruption. The others — the ministers of labour, defence, transportation and housing — remain at large. Al-Samarie gave himself up at the Central Criminal Court, said Judge Radhi al-Radhi, chief of the Public Integrity Commission. He said al-Samarie was put under arrest and taken to a jail where he will remain until a trial starts. No date for the trial has been set.
Two militant groups said Sunday they have named a new spokesman to silence those who claim to speak for the insurgency. In a joint statement posted on an Islamic Web site, the