US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed Sunday that US officials had met with Iraq rebels on several occasions and warned the insurgency could last a dozen years.
Asked on Fox News Sunday about a London Sunday Times report that US officials met twice with insurgents in June, Rumsfeld said: "The first thing I would say about the meetings is they go on all the time."
"Second, the Iraqis have a sovereign government. They will decide what their relationships with various elements of insurgents will be. We facilitate those from time to time," he said.
The Pentagon chief said Iraqi forces, not foreign troops, would have to defeat the insurgency, which he said could last a dozen years.
"Foreign troops are not going to beat the insurgency. It's going to be the Iraqi people that are going to beat the insurgency and Iraqi security forces," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years," he said on Fox.
The London Sunday Times, citing an Iraqi source said to have attended both meetings, said US officials held talks twice in June with insurgents in the hope of negotiating an eventual breakthrough that might stem the violence in the country.
The Iraqi source said the US team included senior military and intelligence officers, a civilian staffer from Congress and a representative of the US embassy in Baghdad, according to the newspaper. The meetings reportedly took place at a villa near Balad in the hills 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
Iraqi officials "are reaching out to the people who are not supporting the government," Rumsfeld told NBC.
"They're not going to try to bring in the people with blood on their hands, for sure, but they're certainly reaching out continuously," he said.
Rumsfeld also downplayed the importance of the meetings.
"My understanding is that some London paper reported this and everyone's chasing it. I would not make a big deal out of it," he said.
Rumsfeld vehemently denied that the talks amounted to negotiating with "terrorists" such as the most-wanted man in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq.
"There's no one negotiating with Zarqawi or the people that are out chopping peoples' heads off," he said.
The talks in June did not involve Zarqawi, the Sunday Times said, but did include representatives of Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sunna - responsible for numerous suicide bombings, including the December bombing of a US military dining hall in Mosul that killed 22.
But three extremist groups, including Ansar al-Sunna, reportedly denied meeting with US officials.
In an Internet statement signed by Ansar al-Sunna leader Abu Abdallah al-Hassan, the group categorically denied "any negotiation" with "any crusader or apostate." The statement's authenticity could not be verified.
"Jihad is the only way to restore dignity to this nation. Without this dignity, the nation will be shamed and defeated," the statement read.
And an Internet statement attributed to Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers warned against "anyone who meets the Jewish, the Crusaders and their agents," and dismissed the reported contacts as lies.
"We have faith in our brother mujahedeen that they will not be fooled by such lies," according to the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.
Another extremist group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, also denied meeting with Americans and vowed to punish any insurgents who did so, according to an Internet statement whose authenticity could not be confirmed.
In Iraq, Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi said he doubted the contacts would stem the unrelenting violence.
"This is not the first time they meet with these elements. They have met with them before," Abdel Mahdi said.
Both President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari have said they were willing to open dialogue with armed Sunni Arab groups willing to renounce violence and enter the political process - except those implicated in the killing of civilians.
But many in Jaafari's government are skeptical that such dialogue would have an effect since many of the groups have no political agenda or leadership and are often splintered into factions with conflicting goals and methods.
The head of the US Central Command, General John Abizaid, refused to comment on the story in an interview on CBS television.
But he did say that US military officers and US and Iraqi diplomats "have been talking with a broad range of people from the Sunni Arab community, some of whom obviously have some links to the insurgency."
Asked on Fox News whether there was an effort to split homegrown Iraqi insurgents from foreign fighters, Rumsfeld said: "Sure, my goodness, yeah. The first thing you want to do is split people off and get some people to be supportive."
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