Sunni insurgent group offers talks with U.S.

The January 2006 cover from a magazine published by Jaish al-Islami fi al-Iraq

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- A Sunni jihadist group in Iraq says it is prepared to negotiate with the United States.

The Islamic Army of Iraq, or Jaish al-Islami fi al-Iraq, provided a videotape in response to questions from a CNN reporter, which the network said were passed to the group's leadership "using known ... insurgent channels."

"We in the Islamic army," says the speaker in the professionally produced video which obscures his face, "do not reject the principle of negotiations with the Americans. But only if the Americans are serious."

CNN says the speaker is Ibrahim al-Shammari, the group's spokesman.

In the portions the network broadcast of what it said was a "wide-ranging question and answer" session, Shammari did not elaborate on what he meant by "serious."

But earlier this month, following a similar offer he made on the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera, Shammari posted on a jihadi Web site the conditions for such talks, according to blogger and Middle Eastern specialist Juan Cole.

In a U.S. government translation of that statement Cole posted, he says the two pre-conditions are that the U.S. Congress "issue a bill obligating the U.S. administration to pull the U.S. forces out of Iraq;" and that "The U.S. government should recognize the Iraqi resistance as the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people."

Read the rest at UPI

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