Some Insurgents Are Asking Iraq for Negotiations

Several Sunni-led insurgent groups have approached the Iraqi government to try to start negotiations after the Iraqi prime minister's presentation on Sunday of a limited plan for reconciliation, a senior legislator from the prime minister's party said Monday.

The groups have made no demands yet, but wanted 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 the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, belongs to the Islamic Dawa Party, a conservative Shiite group.

The groups, made up of Iraqi nationalist fighters, have floated their proposal through Sunni Arab negotiators, Mr. Suneid said in a telephone interview. Although he described the groups as armed, he said they "are not implicated in the bloodletting of Iraqis."

Mr. Suneid declined to say how many groups wanted to open talks, who they were and how big or influential they were. There are indications that seven insurgent factions are involved.

The development was welcomed by a prominent Sunni politician. "This is a good and affirmative step from the armed groups," said Ayad al-Samarraie of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which holds some of the top posts in the government. Referring to Shiite militias, many of them backed by political parties, he added, "We are now looking for other armed groups and militias joined to parties to see how they will work with this project."

Mr. Maliki's reconciliation plan is vague, perhaps purposefully so, about which insurgent groups the government considers suitable to negotiate with. Mr. Maliki said in Parliament on Sunday, "For he who wants to build, we offer a hand with an olive branch." The only firm line, American and Iraqi officials said, was that no amnesty would be granted to members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or guerrillas intent on restoring Saddam Hussein's rule.

American and Iraqi officials say Mr. Maliki has a small window in which to bring Sunni-led guerrillas to the negotiating table and persuade them to lay down their arms. That opportunity was widened by the killing this month of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who had been stoking sectarian clashes between the majority Shiites and Sunni Arabs, who had governed Iraq for generations before the American invasion.

American officials have long accused foreign fighters like Mr. Zarqawi of pushing the insurgency to more extreme measures than those preferred by Iraqi nationalist guerrillas. Many of the Iraqi fighters are disenfranchised Sunni Arabs bitter at their ouster from power and fearful of the rise of Shiite fundamentalism backed by Iran. American officials say that it could be easier to negotiate with the nationalists, many of them from the formerly ruling Baath Party, now that Mr. Zarqawi is out of the picture and his group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, is thought to be in some disarray.