US envoy says he held talks with rebels

BAGHDAD -- The senior American envoy in Iraq, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, held talks last year with men he believed represented major insurgent groups in a drive to bring militant Sunni Arabs into politics.

"There were discussions with the representatives of various groups in the aftermath of the elections, and during the formation of the government before the Samarra incident, and some discussions afterward as well," Khalilzad said in a farewell interview Friday at his home inside the fortified Green Zone. He is the first American official to publicly acknowledge holding such talks.

The meetings began in early 2006 and were quite possibly the first attempts at sustained contact between senior American officials and the Sunni Arab insurgency. Khalilzad flew to Jordan for some of the talks, which included self-identified representatives of the Islamic Army of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades, two leading nationalist factions, American and Iraqi officials said. Khalilzad declined to give details on the meetings, but other officials said the efforts had foundered by the summer, after the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra set off waves of sectarian violence.

Khalilzad's willingness even to approach rebel groups defied the public position of some Bush administration officials that the United States does not negotiate with insurgents. But it showed just how much autonomy Khalilzad was given in hopes that he could find a way to rein in the spiraling violence, and reflected the practical view of Iraqi politics that the ambassador adopted throughout his nearly two-year tenure. American commanders here have also said it is necessary to woo the less radical insurgent groups away from the true militants.

Khalilzad, President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, will leave his post in Iraq this week.