A Ray of Hope From Iraqi Insurgents?
Several Sunni-led insurgent groups have begun talks with the Iraqi government in hopes of starting cease-fire negotiations. The talks began in the wake of the reconciliation plan that the Iraqi prime minister presented on Sunday.Several Sunni-led insurgent groups have begun talks with the Iraqi government in hopes of starting cease-fire negotiations. The talks began in the wake of the reconciliation plan that the Iraqi prime minister presented on Sunday.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 26 ? Several Sunni-led insurgent groups have approached the Iraqi government to try to start serious negotiations, following the Iraqi prime minister’s presentation on Sunday of a limited plan for reconciliation, a senior legislator from the prime minister’s party said today.
The groups have made no demands yet, but want to express their views to top government officials, said the legislator, Hassan al-Suneid.
“There are signals” from “some armed groups to sit at the negotiating table,” said Mr. Suneid, who, like Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, belongs to the Islamic Dawa Party, a conservative Shiite party.
The insurgent groups are made up of Iraqi nationalist fighters, and have floated their proposal through Sunni Arab intermediaries, Mr. Suneid said in a telephone interview. They “are not implicated in the bloodletting of Iraqis,” he added.
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A U.S. drone strike and air assaults by Pakistani military forces killed 38 people this weekend in tribal areas near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, official sources reported Sunday.
The official American reaction to the coordinated attacks in Kabul, the Afghan capital, as well as at Jalalabad airbase, and in Paktika and Logar Provinces, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of guerrilla warfare.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has branded the Taliban’s 18-hour siege of Kabul and places across eastern Afghanistan on Sunday an intelligence failure and called for an investigation into NATO security operations.
Pointing to "the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans" as one key reason for their decision, Taliban leaders in Afghanistan put the kibosh on plans to meet with U.S. envoys, releasing a statement on Thursday explaining the change of plans.
Claims made by NATO that Pakistan is in cahoots with the Afghan Taliban are tantamount to "old wine in an even older bottle," according to Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. However, this particular batch of wine represents thousands of mandatory conversations (read: interrogations) versus Khar's official denial.
In the deadliest day for American troops since the war in Afghanistan began almost 10 years ago, 30 Americans and seven Afghan commandos died Saturday when the Chinook helicopter they were in was shot down by the Taliban.
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