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Sadr peace deal could bolster iraq election plan Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6458483http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6458483
Sadr Peace Deal Could Bolster Iraq Election Plan
Sat Oct 9, 2004 10:19 AM ET
By Mariam Karouny
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A Shi'ite militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr agreed on Saturday to disarm under a deal that could pacify a Baghdad flashpoint and remove one obstacle to Iraq's plan to hold nationwide elections in January.
Sadr's militia has staged two uprisings against U.S. and Iraqi forces this year. An insurgency by Sunni Muslim rebels still rages in large swathes of central and northern Iraq.
Karim al-Bakhati, negotiating for people in Baghdad's Sadr City district, told Reuters U.S. forces had promised to stop bombarding the vast Shi'ite slum area with immediate effect.
"We have agreed that starting from Monday, the Sadr movement will hand over its weapons to the Iraqi police," he said, adding that collection points would be agreed in the next day or two.
Bakhati said U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte and an unidentified U.S. colonel had been present when he reached the accord with Iraqi government officials.
A government source confirmed that a deal had been struck at the talks. "Everything is agreed. Sadr's movement will hand over their weapons," he said, but gave no details.
It was not immediately clear if the militia loyal to the youthful Sadr, a fiercely anti-American Shi'ite cleric, intended to disarm only in Sadr City or in other parts of Iraq as well.
Talks were also under way on a peace deal for Falluja, said to be a haven for foreign militants led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group killed British hostage Kenneth Bigley on Thursday.
Kidnappers struck again on Saturday, seizing a Turkish truck driver identified as Halil Oglu and wounding his colleague near Baiji, 112 miles north of Baghdad, police said.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says his government is not negotiating with rebels in Sadr City, Falluja and other troublespots, but says insurgents can be amnestied if they surrender weapons and make way for Iraqi security forces.
Allawi, backed by U.S. and British forces, wants to regain control of all rebel-held areas before the elections. Rampant violence has raised doubts about the feasibility of the polls.
Plans for a population census due to have been conducted this month have been scrapped, Iraqi officials said. Voters will now produce their food ration cards to enable them to vote.
MORE U.S. TROOPS?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was meeting counterparts from 18 other nations on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Gulf, said Iraqi security forces could grow by 40,000 and the Pentagon might send more troops to Iraq before the polls.
"By the time we get to the elections we may have another plus or minus 40,000 Iraqi trained and equipped security forces" on top of the roughly 100,000 that the Pentagon has said are already on the job, he told reporters traveling with him.
Rumsfeld said adding U.S. troops to the 138,000 now in Iraq was up to Army General George Casey, U.S. commander in Iraq, and Army General John Abizaid, U.S. commander in the region.
Iraqi negotiators had no word on any progress toward arranging the return of Iraqi security forces to Falluja.
U.S. air strikes have often targeted what the military calls safe houses used by Zarqawi's men. One such raid on Friday killed 11 people and wounded 17, among them women and children.
Residents in northern Falluja have been fleeing their homes after what they said were U.S. warnings delivered in Arabic over loudspeakers on Friday. "There are many terrorists living among you and we want to finish them off," the messages said.
Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group beheaded Bigley on Thursday, shortly after the 62-year-old engineer briefly escaped from his captors, insurgent sources said.
They said Bigley managed to get away for about half an hour with the help of one of his captors before he was caught in farmland near the town of Latifiya, southwest of Baghdad.
Insecurity and violence have plagued Iraq since last year's U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. military denied rumors that Tareq Aziz, one of the deposed dictator's top lieutenants, had died in U.S. custody.
"I can absolutely confirm that he is still alive," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq, told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Luke Baker and Khaled Oweis in Baghdad, Fadel al-Badrani in Falluja and Sabah al-Bazee in Baiji)
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