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US confirms direct meetings with insurgent leaders
Asked to respond to a report that US military representatives met with several Sunni Iraqi insurgents twice in June, Rumsfeld told Fox News ''there have probably been many more than that" and described the contacts as an effort to ''split people off and get some people to be supportive" of the political process in Iraq. Other parts of the US government, including the State Department and CIA, have also been holding secret meetings with Iraqi insurgent factions in an effort to stop the violence and coax them into the political process, according to US government officials and others who have participated in the efforts. The military plan, approved in August 2004, seeks to make a distinction between Iraqi insurgents who are attacking US troops because they are hostile to their presence, and foreign insurgents responsible for most of the suicide bombings -- which have killed more than 1,200 people in the last couple of months -- and whose larger political aims are unclear.General John Abizaid, commander of the US Central Command who is in charge of the war in Iraq, told CNN yesterday that ''US officials and Iraqi officials are looking for the right people in the Sunni community to talk to in order to ensure that the Sunni Arab community becomes part of the political process. And clearly we know that the vast majority of the insurgents are from the Sunni Arab community. It makes sense to talk to them." But, Abizaid added, ''We're not going to compromise with Zarqawi," a reference to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is believed to be leading that part of the insurgency involving foreign fighters, particularly Islamic extremists arriving from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, and elsewhere. Citing two Iraqi sources, the newspaper said that among the Sunnis in attendance was a representative from the Ansar al-Sunna Army, which claimed responsibility for killing 22 people in the dining hall of a US base at Mosul, and another from the Islamic Army in Iraq, which claimed responsibility for the murder of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni. Posted by: Paul Moloney 2005-06-27 |
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