Insurgent deal possible, Iraqi leader says

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Sunday that he thinks a deal is possible with seven Iraqi insurgent groups after a series of contacts involving his office and U.S. officials.

"The Americans have entered into negotiations with some of these groups with my blessing," a statement issued by Talabani's office quoted him as saying. "I think it is possible to reach an agreement with seven armed groups that visited me and who I met with."

Talabani did not say what the deal could entail. He also did not identify the seven groups, except to say they do not represent what he called "Saddamis" or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born extremist who heads al-Qaida in Iraq.

U.S. officials have for several months acknowledged holding meetings with intermediaries of homegrown Iraqi insurgent groups, hoping to draw them into the political process. Embassy officials in Baghdad said they are unaware of any new developments that suggest a deal is imminent.

"We haven't entered into negotiations. We've had talks. That's what we've been saying all along," said embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton. "We've had contacts with intermediaries of these groups encouraging them to join the political process."

The contacts have served as part of a broader policy aimed at driving a wedge between the Baathists and religious extremists whose goal is to establish an Islamic state and those Iraqis who regard themselves as nationalists fighting a foreign occupying power.

Meanwhile, eager to discuss promising developments, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice found herself knocked off message Sunday, forced to defend prewar planning against an unlikely critic — Colin Powell, her predecessor at the State Department.

For the Bush administration, it was a rare instance of an in-house dissenter going public.

On Rice's mind was the political breakthrough that had brought her and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq last week and cleared the way for formation of a national unity government.

Yet Powell's comments forced her to revisit the question of whether the U.S. had a large enough force to oust Saddam Hussein and then secure the peace. He said he advised Bush before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to send more troops to Iraq, but that the administration did not follow his recommendation.

Rice, Bush's national security adviser during the run-up to the war, neither confirmed nor denied Powell's assertion. But she spent a good part of her appearances on three Sunday talk shows reaching into the past to defend the White House.

"I don't remember specifically what Secretary Powell may be referring to, but I'm quite certain that there were lots of discussions about how best to fulfill the mission that we went into Iraq," Rice said.

"And I have no doubt that all of this was taken into consideration. But that when it came down to it, the president listens to his military advisers who were to execute the plan," she told CNN's "Late Edition."

Meanwhile, at least 12 people, including two children, were killed Sunday in bombings and drive-by shootings across Iraq, and the bodies of seven others, all males, were found in three separate areas of Baghdad, police said. The bodies were bound and showed signs of torture, police said.

Compiled from the Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press