Iraq's transitional government is considering reaching out to leaders of insurgent groups as opponents of the US-led occupation rethink their position in the wake of the January 30 elections, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.
Lawrence DiRita said he was not aware that any insurgent leaders have come forward, but he said US military commanders frequently are approached by people claiming to be intermediaries for others seeking contacts with authorities.
"I think there's always a desire to try and give people an opportunity to end their opposition to the transition to self-reliance, to the transition to Iraqi rule. There's always a hope that people will step forward," he said.
"And I think the people who are involved in this know that the Iraqi transitional government has itself been doing its own analysis of who might be willing to end the fight and who is worth having those kinds of discussions with," he said.
Time magazine reported Sunday that Pentagon officials have been in direct contact with representatives from Iraq's Sunni insurgency to negotiate an end to ongoing attacks against US troops there.
It quoted a senior insurgent negotiator who told the magazine that two meetings have already taken place, and also said unnamed sources in Washington confirmed the US contacts with insurgent leaders.
"Since the elections, obviously, a lot of Iraqis who have been opposing this transition to self-government in Iraq are, I would guess, rethinking their situation," DiRita said.
DiRita said US military commanders do their best to put people who approach them in touch with the appropriate officials.
But he stressed that it is the Iraqi transitional government and the US Embassy who have the lead, not the US military, and no talks were being held independently with the insurgents.
"It's Iraqis, the Iraqi government, that will decide the terms of which any of this happens. Negotiations aren't for the United States to conduct, and to my knowledge, we're not conducting negotiations," he said.
Time said Pentagon officials said the secret contacts with insurgent leaders were being conducted mainly by US diplomats and intelligence officers.
Although they have no immediate plans to halt their attacks on US troops, the insurgents told Time their aim is to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis and eventually negotiate an end to the US military's offensive in the Sunni triangle.
Insurgent negotiators have told their US interlocutors that they would accept a UN peacekeeping force as the US troop presence recedes, Time wrote in its latest issue.
Brigadier General David Rodriguez, meanwhile, said there has been a slight decline in insurgent attacks since the elections, but it was too soon to tell whether the trend would last.
He said it was "a pretty bloody weekend" with more than 40 people killed in a series of suicide bombings and attacks Saturday on Ashura, the holiest day of the year for Shiite Muslims. But the number of casualties on Ashura this year were just a third of those suffered last year, he said.
The number of Iraqi security forces now stands at 140,000, Rodriguez said. He said there are currently 155,000 US troops in the country, a number that is expected to decline in coming weeks to about 138,000 as troops held over for the elections return home.
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