US threatens new Fallujah offensive

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The commander of US Marines in Iraq said yesterday that within days he will order all civilians to leave Fallujah to make way for a renewed US offensive unless residents turn over more heavy weapons and rein in insurgents.

US officials and a group of local leaders struck a deal Monday to disarm most of the city in an effort to isolate hard-core insurgents, but the Fallujah leaders appear to lack the clout to deliver, said Lieutenant General James T. Conway. He cited a "paltry" delivery of rusty, mostly unusable weapons that came in a single pickup truck, and an attack on a Marine position in northwestern Fallujah by 60 to 80 fighters on Wednesday.

"If the negotiators cannot manufacture a peaceful scenario, we'll have to do what we came here to do," Conway told a small group of reporters at Camp Fallujah, the military base on the outskirts of the city the Marines cordoned off April 4 in an effort to trap and root out the fighters, whom the US military calls a mix of Islamists and remnants of Saddam Hussein's former Ba'ath Party. He said that if more weapons were not turned in soon, Marines would resume fighting in force in "days, not weeks."

Marines now control an industrial area in the southern part of the city and a section of northwest Fallujah. But since they suspended offensive operations nearly two weeks ago to allow for negotiations, they have not attempted to take downtown Fallujah, where US officials say various insurgent groups operate with impunity and the town's intimidated police force only patrols the area directly around its headquarters.

If Marines relaunch their offensive, Conway said, they "will demand that the noncombatants leave the city so that innocent people will not be injured." That raised the specter of tens of thousands more people fleeing Fallujah; about 70,000 fled last week from the city of 200,000 to 300,000 people.

Ideally, senior officers at Camp Fallujah, headquarters of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, would like to first separate the most implacable fighters from the population and then confront them with overwhelming force. They say they are trying to make clear to residents that their quarrel is with hard-core fighters driven by Islamist or Ba'athist ideology, not with what one senior officer described as "angry, confused youngsters" who took up arms in anger over Fallujah casualties or life under occupation.

US forces don't want insurgents to escape, nor do they want to pound the city with artillery with most of its residents inside. Yet by continuing their roadblock of the city, where most residents have spent nearly three weeks cowering in their houses and at least 264 people have been killed in the recent fighting, they risk hardening the population against them. US officials said another 36 insurgents were killed during clashes on Wednesday.

Conway estimated that there are 200 foreign fighters in the city who will fight to the death. Another senior military officer said it is equally impossible to negotiate with the relatively small group of well-trained former members of Hussein's intelligence service and Fedayeen militia that he believes are coordinating the most lethal attacks and using Falluja as a base for the insurgency throughout the country.

But there are also hundreds of fighters, Conway said, "that are influenced by their imams or influenced by the idea of jihad but that otherwise don't have blood on their hands. We think we can deal reasonably with those people and fold them into the future of a new Fallujah."

To help in that effort, the Marines were leaning heavily on the delegation of city council members, professionals, and tribal leaders who negotiated the Monday agreement. They hoped that group could convince city residents to disgorge the hard core fighters -- and disassociate themselves from the fight by turning in heavy weapons.

But yesterday, they voiced increasing disappointment with those leaders and skepticism that they could control the fighters. A measure of their doubt was US officials' refusal yesterday to reveal most of the negotiators' names out of fear for their safety.

"The people of Fallujah have not responded well to the agreement we made in this very room, that weapons turn-in would be a reflection of their desire to end this thing peacefully," Conway said, speaking in the small conference room where the deal was struck.

A lone, visibly embarrassed Iraqi police officer surrendered the only shipment of weapons on Wednesday, officials here said. Conway called them "junk, things I wouldn't even begin to ask my Marines to fire."

The surrendered weapons included 21 rocket-propelled grenades, 12 of which were inert; 113 unusable mortar shells; rusty mortar tubes, some of them bent; and seven aging machine guns, including an MG-34, a World War II German model best known as the weapon of Chewbacca, the hairy "Star Wars" film character, one US official said.

That same day, the official said, US Marines uncovered two larger stashes of brand-new weapons. But when an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps commander canvassed people to turn over their arms, the official said, they responded with insults and drove him from their neighborhood.

"To me, it shows the weakness and inability of the people we're negotiating with to deliver," said the senior military officer. "Why should I be optimistic about negotiations?"

Because of the "paltry" arms handover, Conway said, the Marines refused to allow more families to return to Fallujah today. Under the agreement, they had planned to allow in 50 families per day.

Conway hopes that Fallujah residents will turn against the fighters.

"We believe from what some of the people who have been leaving the city tell us that there is some friction between some of the good people of the city and the people they believe have brought this situation to them," he said. "We hope to be able to exploit that."

At Camp Fallujah, there is frustration among some Marines that their offensive was cut short to allow negotiations. Conway said he did not begrudge the pause.

"We had momentum on our side. Our losses were very small up until the point we were told to halt and allow the negotiations to take place," he said. "I think that they will be more significant were we to start again than they would have been had we continued."

"But again," he added, "that's just the Marine losses. That doesn't take into consideration this whole larger picture of civilians."

Anne Barnard can be reached at abarnard@globe.com.