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BAGHDAD, June 22
-- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new plan to
promote reconciliation among Iraq's rival factions
will offer amnesty to Iraqis who have "carried
weapons" but not to those who have committed serious
crimes, according to Iraqi politicians who have read
the proposal.
The plan is the first formal initiative by Maliki's
Shiite Muslim-led government to reach out to
insurgents and create a political dialogue among
factions. It has gone through several revisions, and
the specifics are expected to be discussed in
parliament Sunday.
Earlier proposals suggested offering pardons to
Iraqis who have attacked U.S. troops but not to
those who attacked Iraqis, an idea the U.S. Senate
strongly denounced. The new plan does not make that
distinction, Iraqi officials said.
"It says that the
government will issue an amnesty for all those who
have not committed crimes against the people of Iraq
and the friends of Iraq," said Deputy Prime Minister
Barham Saleh, an ethnic Kurd from President Jalal
Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "Those who
attack U.S. forces are not immune from legal
consequences. An attack on Iraqi forces or
multinational forces are seen legally . . . as the
same thing from the perspective of the government."
Details of the reconciliation plan emerged on a day
when the U.S. military announced that five service
members had been killed in action.
Four Marines died Tuesday while operating in the
violent western province of Anbar. Three were
assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, the
military said in a statement; the fourth was part of
the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force.
A fifth service member, whose unit was not named,
died at about 11:30 a.m. the following day when a
roadside bomb blasted his vehicle south of Baghdad,
military officials said.
Many political leaders here say that the violence
plaguing Iraq cannot be halted without engaging
insurgents in political discussions. But Maliki's
reconciliation plan does not include offering
amnesty to members of al-Qaeda or to loyalists of
former president Saddam Hussein who committed war
crimes, Iraqi officials said.
The plan has about 20 central points, which include
inviting human rights organizations to monitor Iraqi
prisons and allowing certain members of Hussein's
Baath Party who were removed from their jobs after
the U.S. invasion to make a case for reinstatement,
officials said. "Implementing it will be the real
challenge," Saleh said.
The plan appears to be as much a starting point for
discussions as a culmination of them, said Mahmoud
Othman, a Kurdish legislator. He said that defining
who would be pardonable, which crimes were
considered major crimes and how the militias would
be treated will all require more work.
Othman also said the proposed amnesty was too
restrictive. "To me, anybody who is ready to make a
dialogue with the government and wants the political
process to succeed" should be able to seek amnesty,
he said.
But Mithal Alousi, a member of parliament from a
secular party, said that if the reconciliation plan
"is for the thugs and criminals, I say no,"
according to an interview broadcast on al-Hurra
television. "There are some who have slaughtered
Iraqis, yet they claim they represent parties and
militias, and the religious extremists. . . . Let's
be honest and call things by their name."
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