BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. officials have met figures from some Sunni Arab insurgent groups but have so far not received any commitment for them to lay down their arms, Western diplomats in Baghdad and neighboring Jordan said Wednesday.
Three more U.S. troops were killed in Iraq, two of them in roadside bombings, the U.S. command said.
The meetings, described as being in the initial stage, have not included members of al-Qaida in Iraq or like-minded religious extremists, the diplomats said.
Contacts have taken place in western Iraq, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, according to two diplomats based in the Jordanian capital, Amman. One of them said talks might shift to Egypt “at some point.”
U.S. officials have said establishing a dialogue with the insurgents was difficult because of the lack of a unified command structure among the various groups and the absence of a leadership capable of speaking for most of them.
Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the United States is involved in talks on promoting Iraq’s political process with “all sorts of groups,” but declined to say if any insurgents were among them.
However, a Western diplomat in Baghdad who is familiar with the dialogue said the U.S. was reaching out to “Sunni Arab nationalists” and “some Islamists from the Shiite and Sunni sides,” many of whom have grievances about jobs and reconstruction money.
“We hear all the time that they are interested in coming in but we haven’t seen signs,” the diplomat said. “We want to see attacks stopped. The question is, can they help end the violence if they want to join.”
The United States is promoting efforts to form a national unity government in which Iraq’s Shiite and Kurdish leaders would offer Sunni Arab figures key positions to try to curb the insurgency.
On Wednesday, the U.S. military said an Army soldier from the 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment died of wounds suffered three days earlier in a roadside bombing in Anbar province.
Police found the bodies of four Shiite pilgrims shot repeatedly and dumped on Baghdad’s northern outskirts. Three bullet-riddled bodies turned up in Baghdad’s Sadr City.
An unarmed and unmanned U.S. aircraft providing security coverage for Ashoura went down near Sadr City on Tuesday and was returned by local leaders Wednesday, the military said. It was unclear what caused the crash.
Higher Education Minister Sami al-Mudafar escaped unharmed from a Baghdad car bomb attack on his convoy in which three of his bodyguards were wounded. It was the second attack on the Shiite lawmaker in two years.
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