Amnesty for Iraqi insurgents soon

* Militias told to disarm
* Oil pipeline hit
* 11 more die in attacks

BAGHDAD: An amnesty for Iraqis involved in the insurgency will be announced on Sunday or Monday, just one week after Iraq was handed sovereignty from the US-led occupation authorities, a government spokesman said.

“This amnesty will be unveiled today or tomorrow by the Minister of Justice Malik Dohan al-Hassan,” Gurgis Sada, the top spokesman for Iraq’s caretaker government, told AFP, noting that the cabinet has already approved the measure.

“The government has concluded that many Iraqis simply joined the so-called resistance (against the US-led coalition) because they had no means of living, had lost their job or were unemployed members of Iraq’s old army,” he said. “As a result, the cabinet has decided to give these people a new chance.”

The amnesty will outline more precisely who is eligible to apply but Sada fleshed some of the details. “Rebels who, for example, have not killed anyone during their activities but who continue to hold weapons could be included,” explained the spokesman.

According to Sada, such people must hand in their arms, acknowledge the error of their ways and promise never to commit such acts again. “For its part, the government will actively help to give each individual a job to help them reintegrate into Iraqi society,” he said, warning that “severe sanctions would await those who fail to seize this opportunity.”

Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on ABC’s “This Week” programme that Iraqi militias, including those loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, must lay down their weapons. “The position of the government is very clear. There is no room for any militias to operate in Iraq. Everybody should follow the bounds of the law, whether it’s Moqtada al-Sadr or anybody else.”

Allawi said he met on Saturday with a delegation trying to mediate between the government and Sadr, who has urged Iraqis to oppose the continued presence of around 160,000 mainly US foreign troops in Iraq.

Violence: Saboteurs attacked a strategic oil pipeline linking Iraq’s northern and southern fields on Sunday, further cutting exports that were halved by a hole blown in another pipeline a day before, officials and witnesses said.

The attacks on oil — Iraqq’s economic lifeblood — undermine the new Iraqi governmentt’s attempt to bring about economic recovery and improve the poor living conditions that feed insurgency and political unrest. Smoke rising hundreds of metres into the air from the pipeline hit on Sunday in the Hawijat al-Fallujah area could be seen from Baghdad some 80km to the northeast.

A US soldier, six Iraqi national guardsmen and a policeman were killed by insurgents near Baghdad. “Five dead bodies were brought in here, comprising one lieutenant and four soldiers, as well as five wounded people, three of whom were seriously hurt,” said Haydar Sabah, a doctor at a hospital in Mahmudiyah.

Iraqi troops thwarted a car bombing outside their regional headquarters northeast of Baghdad, killing an attacker before could detonate his vehicle. Two bystanders also died in the assault.

Eleven Iraqis were injured by Polish soldiers who fired “indiscriminately” after a bomb attack on one of their patrols in Karbala.

Police in Kirkuk said they have arrested six suspected members of the Ansar al-Islam extremist Islamic group, which has links with the Al Qaeda network, and three other insurgents.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda-linked group Ansar al-Sunna denied claiming to have beheaded a US marine in Iraq, as neighbouring Iran and Syria called for the rapid departure of foreign troops. The US military has insisted there was no credible evidence to support the claim that Ansar al-Sunna had butchered the Lebanese-born marine and it believed Wassef Ali Hassoun, missing for nearly two weeks, was still alive. agencies

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