Iraqi Leaders, Insurgents Have Hope for Cease-Fire

After nearly a week of fierce fighting, members of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council said early today that they expected a cease-fire between American forces and insurgents to begin in this battle-racked city.

Negotiators from the council entered the city Saturday even as American F-16s dropped 500-pound bombs and gunfire rang out in the streets. Late Saturday, after emerging from a meeting with Marine generals, the negotiators said they believed they had made some progress and were hoping for a solid, 12-hour cease-fire today to establish trust between the two sides.

“We want to put the good people of Fallouja in control of their city,” said Saif Rahman, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party and an aide to the leader of the negotiating team, acting Governing Council member Hachim Hassani.

Early today, a man purporting to represent the insurgents in Fallouja called the Al Jazeera TV channel and said his fighters would honor the cease-fire. But it was unclear whether the man controlled all the insurgents in the city.

Also unknown was whether the U.S. military, which initiated combat to find those who killed and mutilated four American contractors 11 days ago, would abide by the deal.

There were conflicting signals all day Saturday about whether a cease-fire could take hold.

As discussions were underway, the Marines on Saturday morning sent another battalion to Fallouja and were pushing deeper into the city. Although the Marines slowed their push late in the day, U.S. military officials said that if the negotiations fell apart, the troops would take the city of 300,000 people.

Military officials said they were launching attacks only as a means of defense against insurgent snipers, who fired heavily on troops with guns, mortars and grenades. But officials acknowledged that there were more air attacks on Fallouja on Saturday than at any time during the last week of intense clashes between coalition troops and the mostly Sunni Muslim fighters.

Overnight the city was reportedly quiet. This morning, some bombing on the outskirts could be heard.

Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst and former Defense Department official, said that the apparent mismatch of new U.S. ground operations amid talk of a cease-fire was a measure of just how volatile the situation in Iraq had become.

“Neither the CPA nor the U.S. military fully understands what is going on,” he said, referring to the American civilian Coalition Provisional Authority that runs Iraq.

President Bush, vacationing at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, said Marines were taking control of Fallouja “block by block.”

He reaffirmed his intent to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, characterizing the escalating hostilities as a battle between advocates and opponents of democracy.

“We will win this test of wills, and overcome every challenge, because the cause of freedom and security is worth our struggle,” Bush said in his weekly radio address, which was taped Friday afternoon and broadcast Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, a group of insurgents who kidnapped an American civilian who was apparently in a U.S. fuel convoy outside Baghdad said in a videotaped message Saturday night that they would mutilate and kill the man within 12 hours unless Americans withdrew from Fallouja. As the deadline passed, there was no word on his status.

The threat came as other reports circulated that three Japanese civilians kidnapped last week and threatened with death could be released today.

In the southern city of Kut, skirmishes continued between U.S. troops and members of an armed militia loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr.

A Kuwaiti cleric connected with Iraq’s most revered Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a statement condemning the uprising by Sadr’s supporters, which started last week.

“We condemn the acts of sabotage, chaos and takeover of public property by a group that unfortunately is part of one of Iraq’s biggest and best-known families,” said Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Mohri. He was referring to Sadr’s late father, a highly respected cleric who was assassinated in 1999.

Sadr, whose militia controls at least two other southern cities, issued a statement saying he was suspending fighting in the holy city of Karbala, where 1.5 million Shiite pilgrims were gathering for the religious holiday of Arbain.

There were reports that members of the Governing Council and other Shiite leaders were trying to mediate between Sadr and the coalition, which has demanded his arrest.

Despite the promise of an armistice for the holiday, there were reports of firearm attacks on Karbala’s City Hall. Coalition officials also warned of possible attacks by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an accused terrorist linked to the Al Qaeda network who released a tape recently pledging to kill Shiites.

The fighting in Fallouja started Monday as Marines encircled this restive Euphrates River city, a stronghold of the Iraqi insurgency.

Initially, the military demanded that the mayor and other officials in Fallouja turn over those who killed the contractors. When that did not happen, U.S. officials insisted that they would not shy away from confrontation. They said that they were trying to minimize civilian casualties while moving in and facing gunfire from mosques and homes.

But as the battle wore on, Arabic-language television was saturated with reports of dead women and children, overflowing emergency rooms and general mayhem. Iraqi politicians who have supported the U.S. began to demand an end to the attack, which has reportedly left hundreds of Iraqis dead.

The country’s human rights minister announced his resignation Saturday, saying that the U.S. would not let him do his job.

Brig Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday that the complaints were a factor in the decision to pursue a cease-fire.

“If, in fact, the moderates -- the majority of this country -- and their leadership has a view in how we’re conducting operations and where we’re conducting operations, we must listen to their views,” he said at a news conference here.

The conference was followed by a series of interviews with Arabic-language television networks asking the insurgents to comply with a cease-fire.

An attempt to halt the fighting in Fallouja had failed a day earlier.

On Friday, Kimmitt announced that Marines were suspending offensive operations in hopes of allowing negotiations. The discussions never happened, and within 90 minutes, Marine commanders said they were back on the offensive.

Kimmitt said the goal was for law and order to be restored in Fallouja, and for the authorities there to hand over the people behind the attacks and all foreign fighters who might have sneaked into the city in hopes of waging a holy war against the occupation.

Insurgents have set up sporadic checkpoints on the road from Baghdad west to Fallouja, and have launched repeated attacks on military convoys traveling that route. It was in one such assault Friday that the American civilian hostage, who identified himself to an Australian journalist at the scene as Thomas Hamill, was taken in a car by three gunmen.

A group calling itself the Mujahedin Brigades released a tape of Hamill on Saturday night. The hostage identified himself as a 43-year-old Mississippi resident who works for a private company helping U.S. convoys. Associated Press reported that he was employed by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. He said he had been treated well.

Then a man announced in Arabic that if U.S. troops did not withdraw from Fallouja by this morning, “he will be treated worse than those who were killed and burned in Fallouja.”

In addition to Hamill, there have been reports of several other kidnappings in Iraq. An Israeli Arab and a Canadian have been seized. The Pentagon said two servicemen, and an unspecified number of civilians, were unaccounted for. Several armed groups have made claims of having taken a wide number of hostages but offered no proof.

As for the Japanese civilians seized last week, Arabic-language media reported Saturday that a group of clerics had worked out a deal for the three hostages’ release.

Also Saturday, one American airman was killed and two were wounded in a mortar attack on an air base in Balad, north of Baghdad, the military said, bringing the U.S. military’s death toll from the week of fighting across the country to 50.

In Baqubah, troops engaged in running gun battles with insurgents and military officials said the fighting there was at its heaviest since November. Scattered fighting broke out in several Baghdad neighborhoods.

The Governing Council negotiators said that when they entered Fallouja on Saturday, their worst fears about the conditions there were realized.

“The scene is devastating,” said Rahman, the Iraqi Islamic Party member.

He said that the best estimates are 518 dead and 1,000 injured. The negotiators, who saw several shot-up ambulances, brought a team of doctors who were aghast at the conditions.

In Fallouja, weary residents said they hoped the negotiations would bear fruit.

“We want it to be finished,” said Abdullah Qubaisi, 52, a local leader. “Enough is enough. We have lost enough civilians.”

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Perry reported from Fallouja and Riccardi from Baghdad. Times staff writer Peter Gosselin in Washington and special correspondent Hamid Sulaibi in Fallouja contributed to this report.