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Najaf truce talks take a tumble

50 killed as US warplanes pound Samarra; 2 GIs, 18 other Iraqis die in attacks

AFP, Najaf
Peace talks between the Iraqi government and a Shia Muslim militia broke down Saturday, hours after US troops said 50 insurgents were killed when war planes pounded the Sunni Muslim bastion of Samarra.
"I am overcome with deep grief as I declare that the efforts being made to reach a peaceful solution to the crisis in Najaf have failed," the government's pointman on security, Muqafaq al-Rubaie, told a news conference here.
Fierce fighting between radical Shia leader Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army and US-backed Iraqi forces stopped on the ninth day, Friday, to pave the way for the truce talks.
Earlier, Najaf governor Adnan al-Zorfi said the talks had reached partial agreement, but stressed there could be no place for militias in Najaf.
"Militias should be dissolved as there is no room for them inside the holy city Points concerning the old city are still under discussion."
The old city, site of the shrine of Imam Ali, one of the most sacred spots
in the Shia world, is still not under government control.
In a sign of possible trouble ahead, Sadr spokesman Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani said mediators had agreed to let the militiamen keep their weapons, to be used "if need be," calling the concession a "slap in the face for the Americans".
But another Sadr spokesman later accused Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of torpedoing efforts to end the Najaf fighting and warned against any "plot" to perpetrate a "massacre" in the holy city.
"We had agreed with al-Rubaie on all points," Ali Smeisim told the alJazeera satellite television station.
"Then interim prime minister Iyad Allawi ended it and called him back to Baghdad, and the American troops are now crawling on Najaf from two sides."
Late Friday, Sadr, his hand bandaged, gave a rallying cry to his fighters at the Imam Ali shrine.
"Maybe this truce is a trick, so I want you to keep to your jihad," or holy war, Shaibani said on behalf of Sadr, addressing himself to all Iraqi prov-
inces.
Sadr has set a plethora of conditions for his militia to leave Najaf, chiefly the withdrawal of the US-led forces and the handover of the city to the Marjayia, the Shia religious authority.
He also wants a definitive end to the 17-month foreign military presence following the 2003 US-led invasion, but Shaibani said Saturday the cleric was prepared to accept a UN force in Iraq.
"We prefer the UN to the (US-led) occupation forces, because Iraq is a member of the United Nations," Shaibani.
"There is a big difference between the blue helmets (of UN troops) and the occupation troops."
Overnight, US warplanes dropped 500-pound (250-kilogram) bombs on "known enemy locations" around Samarra in an air and land assault, said Captain Bill Coppernoll of the US 1st Infantry Division.
There was no independent confirmation of the death toll cited by the US military. Samarra's main hospital reported 25 dead and 86
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wounded from the fighting, many of them women and children.
More than 40 homes, the municipal building and the political party offices of Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib were destroyed. Police said their headquarters was badly damaged and three of their comrades were killed.
South of Baghdad, 14 Iraqis were killed and 37 wounded in fierce gun battles in Hilla between Sadr's Mehdi Army and Polish-backed Iraqi police forces, the health ministry said.
Fighters attacked police stations and government buildings, and police chief General Qais Hamza Aboud said 49 militiamen and three policemen were killed.
Twenty Poles who were trapped inside a police station in the city during the overnight fighting returned to their base Saturday, the Polish military said.
Out west, in the troubled Al-Anbar province, two US soldiers were also killed, bringing to 694 the number of US soldiers killed in action since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, based on Pentagon statistics.
Three Iraqis were killed in clashes
between US troops and insurgents in the restive Sunni city of Ramadi, medics said.
In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, one person was killed when US soldiers opened fire after their convoy was attacked, medics said. The US military said the incident would be investigated.
On Saturday, Iraq resumed pumping of oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan at levels not seen for the past year due to repeated acts of sabotage, the Northern Oil Company said.
"Pumping resumed this morning at 8:00 am (0400 GMT) from the oil fields in Kirkuk to Ceyhan at the rate of 600,000 to 800,000 barrels per day," an official who wished to remain anonymous told AFP.
But in Basra, an official of the Southern Oil Company said, following the halt in oil production announced Monday as fighting flared in Najaf, "now we have stopped pumping too through the pipeline."
Crude exports from Basra's two main offshore terminals have been slashed in half for several days, costing the country millions of dollars in lost revenue and helping to send world oil prices to record levels.