Secret parleys ensured vote peace

BAGHDAD

American diplomats called it “mission impossible” — to bend the rules on contact with powerful anti-American Sunni forces in Iraq and negotiate a cease-fire — all before last week’s elections.

Their orders came from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. The effort took months and culminated in a day of voting in which Sunni Arabs came out in droves after having boycotted the first parliamentary election a year ago.

The cease-fire period started Dec. 13 and ended Sunday, spanning Thursday’s elections. The period passed with no major attacks on Iraqi civilians.

The effort by U.S. diplomats and military officials also redefined U.S. policy in Iraq — a potentially seismic shift that President Bush spelled out this month in four major policy speeches that referred to three types of insurgents: “rejectionists,” “Saddamists” and terrorists.

Washington seeks truce

U.S. officials continue to talk with the “rejectionists,” a category that appears to include the bulk of those who have taken up arms to battle American and Iraqi forces.

Now that the elections have passed, the United States is continuing the effort, seeking a long-term cease-fire that would drive a wedge between Iraqi Sunnis and terrorist forces, such as those led by Abu Musab Zarqawi and his al Qaeda in Iraq. The terrorist organization seeks to impose a primitive, Taliban-like regime on Iraq and use Iraq as a base from which to topple governments throughout the Middle East and larger Muslim world.

A senior official at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad gave the following account to The Washington Times and World News & Features (www.worldnf.com), a specialized news agency focusing on conflict zones:

“At several stages we told [Mr. Khalilzad] it could not work, but he insisted and pressed and pushed,” the official said on the condition of anonymity.

The election-day results appear to have exceeded even the insistent and “impossibly optimistic” ambassador’s own expectations. “They bode well for a future deal, but several pitfalls remain.”

The effort began this autumn when the American team drew up a list of “literally hundreds” of people they would like to meet. “We let the word out. … And we began dealing with the real bad guys, or the interlocutors.”

The initial talks were local encounters mediated by tribal sheiks in the vast Anbar province, with its expanses of desert and slivers of verdant land alongside the Euphrates River.

Small-scale but vital deals were made.

Horse-trading tried

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