Talabani meets Iraq insurgent leaders

aljazeera.net: Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, says he recently met the representatives of seven armed groups and is optimistic that they may agree to lay down their arms.

"I think we may reach an agreement with seven armed groups that visited me and I met with them," his office said in a statement on Sunday without indicating when the meeting took place.

Talabani's spokesman Kamran Qaradaghi declined to identify the seven groups, although they were presumed to be Sunni Arab insurgents.

It was the first time a senior Iraqi official has acknowledged meeting figures from the insurgency, although US officials have said privately that they have conferred directly with Iraqis who claimed to have contacts with insurgents.

However, Ibrahim al-Shammari, spokesman of the Islamic Army in Iraq, denied that his group had met Talabani or any US officials.

"Our strategic choice is to resist the occupation by armed force," al-Shammari told Al Jazeera television. "We neither met the Americans, nor the US ambassador, nor with the (Iraqi) government because it is an illegal government with no credibility." Read more