Fallujah delegation offers peace talks

A Fallujah delegation today offered to resume peace talks with the interim Iraqi government if the US ceases attacks against the city and releases the chief negotiator.

“We are ready to resume talks,” delegation member Khaled Fakhri al-Jumeili told reporters. “We suspended the talks because we felt that the Iraqi government, especially Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, was meeting the demands of the Americans.”

He said that if attacks and air strikes stop, “we are ready to return to the negotiating table”.

Sheik Abdul Hamid Jadou, another delegation member, added that the delegation also wanted its chairman, Khaled al-Jumeili, freed. Witnesses said he was arrested by the US yesterday after prayers at a village south of Fallujah.

Talks between Iraqi officials and Fallujah clerics had been under way for weeks to restore government control in the insurgent stronghold 40 miles west of Baghdad.

The talks broke down on Thursday over the government’s demands that the city hand over Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom the Fallujah leadership maintains is not in the city.