IRAQ: Iraq's president said yesterday that he and US officials had met insurgents and that a deal could be reached with some groups to end violence.
Though US and Iraqi officials have spoken before of contacts with Sunni Arab rebels, the statement by Jalal Talabani came as Iraq's various factions negotiate on a new government. It was among the strongest indications yet that some groups involved in the three-year-old war may be ready to lay down their arms.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad yesterday the wife and daughter of a former construction and housing minister Omar al-Damluji were kidnapped, the latest in a series of abductions and killings of the family of politicians and former politicians. Three foreign security contractors were also killed when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb just outside Baghdad, witnesses said. Two more foreigners were wounded in the blast.
The British foreign office and its embassy spokesman in Baghdad confirmed three people died and two, including a Briton, were wounded in an attack on private contractors in the area.
A spokeswoman for the foreign office said those killed were not British but declined to give their nationality.
One police officer was killed and three policemen wounded when their patrol was targeted by a car bomb near the town of Musayib, south of Baghdad. And the US military said yesterday that in Yusifiya more than 20 foreign insurgents, several of them wearing suicide vests, were killed by US and Iraqi forces during raids in the rural area, which is south of Baghdad.
In Kirkuk a civilian was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, police said.
Iraq's parliament, elected in December, said it would meet for the third time on Wednesday, but Shia prime minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki is not expected to unveil his cabinet line-up so soon, an aide to Mr Maliki said.
In a statement, Mr Talabani said: "I believe that a deal could be reached with seven armed groups that visited me."
He added that US officials took part in the discussions in the president's Kurdish home region in northern Iraq.
Insurgents in the Sunni heartland observed an informal truce during December's parliamentary election, allowing a big turnout among minority Sunnis, who had previously boycotted the US-backed political process.
A US embassy spokeswoman said the US position has always been to try to engage insurgents who are not associated with Saddam Hussein or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, into joining the political process.
Mr Talabani said: "There are other groups, excluding the Saddamists and Zarqawi-types, who are involved in military operations to remove the occupiers and these are the ones who we are seeking to hold a dialogue with and to include them in the political process."
Mr Talabani, who was re-elected as head of state by Iraq's new parliament last week, said the talks took place in the northern region of Kurdistan. He did not say when the talks occurred.
His spokesman said they were "recent". He did not name the groups involved in the talks.
In Habbaniya, newly graduated Iraqi soldiers protested after a passing-out parade yesterday saying they were promised they would serve only in their home towns. The troops were among 1,000 graduates, mostly from the Sunni Arab minority, at a base near Falluja west of Baghdad.
Some took off their shirts and threw them down in anger. Others yelled at their officers and threatened to quit. One officer yelled back, telling them to leave, witnesses said.
In Copenhagen, Danish TV2 television news said Denmark is planning to bring home up to 100 of its 550 soldiers in Iraq.