Feuding Iraqis reach agreement

UMass figure led talks on reconciliation

WASHINGTON - Nearly two dozen leaders from Iraq's feuding factions who were brought together under the aegis of a University of Massachusetts at Boston professor are slated to unveil an agreement tomorrow aimed at healing the ethnic and sectarian rifts in their country.

Obama says his trip to Iraq may refine but won't change his policy on the war. A6.

The agreement - hammered out during privately funded reconciliation meetings in Helsinki - includes public commitments from key members of the majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni parties. The pact calls for banning militias from operating outside the law and for reintegrating personnel from Saddam Hussein's dissolved army into Iraq's new institutions, according to a copy provided to the Globe.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the agreement is that it will be announced at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, marking the first time that participants in the effort have felt safe enough to gather inside their own country.

"A year ago, people were undoubtedly more frightened," said Padraig O'Malley, a professor and veteran peacemaker, speaking in a telephone interview from Iraq. "Now they are more relaxed."

Though the pact involves general commitments in principle, and is not expected to have an immediate effect on the ground, Iraqi officials said the fact that so many diverse leaders are willing to publicly support such an agreement is a sign of improvement in the political climate in Iraq since violence declined last fall.

"The Helsinki Agreement has the potential to bring the Iraqi political parties together in common cause in a way that no endeavor has . . . succeeded in doing," Iraq's Minister of Reconciliation, Akram al Hakim, said in a statement.

Humam Hamoudi, head of the Constitutional Review Committee and a key figure in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, one of the most powerful Shi'ite parties in Iraq, said the pact builds on moves the Iraqi government has already begun making - such as offering pensions to members of Hussein's army. The pact keeps "the world informed of the improvement Iraq is witnessing," he said in a statement.

Despite the optimistic tone, many analysts said Iraq's leaders remain far from compromising on core issues plaguing the country, such as how much power the central government will have in distributing oil wealth, and how many Sunnis should be welcome in the new Iraqi security forces.

"They can hug each other, and kiss each other, but they still don't agree," said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. "It is good to agree to a set of principles. Abiding by them is going to be the hardest part."

The pact - described as a framework for more detailed negotiations - commits Iraqi leaders and their parties to "limiting arms possession to the government," and eschewing sectarian, racial, or factional discrimination. The group also supports forming an independent advisory committee to provide "practical solutions aimed at remedying the negative effects of the past," which could advocate for the creation of a body similar to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In addition to Hamoudi and Hakim, the signatories include Haidar Alabadi, a close aide to Prime Minister Maliki; and Ayad Samurai, a main leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni party in parliament. Qusay Al Suhail and Hassan al Rubaie, two parliamentarians loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, also signed on.

The fact that the Sadrists agreed to a ban on illegal militias is significant, even though no one expects Sadr's Mahdi Army to disband any time soon, said Daniel Serwer, a vice president at the US Institute of Peace, a Washington-based group. "Statements like this become a benchmark by which people are measured," he said. "The next time you talk to them, you can say, 'You committed to these things. Why haven't you done them?' "

O'Malley's initiative is one of two privately organized reconciliation efforts that have been trying to get Iraq's various political factions to work together. The International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, a Washington-based conflict resolution organization, has held meetings since 2005 in which it took Iraqi parliamentarians to Beirut and Cairo to talk about reconciliation.

Secrecy and a safe foreign location were key to ensuring participation, said Randa Slim, who helped organize those meetings. But in recent months, that has changed, she said. Iraqi participants are more willing to speak pubicly about their participation and are eager to hold a meeting in Iraq - a sign of growing confidence in the security situation and the public's appetite for peace.

O'Malley's reconciliation effort, funded by Massachusetts furniture-maker Robert Bendetson, held two secret meetings in Finland last fall and this spring.

So far, the State Department has kept its distance from both efforts so as not to "taint them," according to one US official, who asked not to be identified. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that he did not know whether the efforts had helped reconciliation, but that they came at a time of incremental improvements on the political front. "The Iraqis are coming together," he said. "Their politics are starting to cohere. Has this contributed to it? I can't tell you. I'm sure that it hasn't hurt."

In the past six months, Iraqi politicians have managed to pass a budget that distributes Iraq's oil revenues to various communities, and an amnesty law that prompted Iraqi courts to order the release of 20,000 prisoners - many of them Sunnis accused of involvement in the insurgency - as a goodwill gesture by the Shi'ite-dominated government. So far, roughly 1,800 have been set free.

This week, the Sunni bloc of politicians rejoined the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after a year of boycotting. They cited the amnesty law and Maliki's recent crackdown on Shi'ite militiamen associated with Sadr, who brutally cleansed Sunnis from Shi'ite neighborhoods.

"The progress is very slow, but the direction seems to be right," said a senior European diplomat in Baghdad, who noted that there was a new attitude toward the government. "Last year, there was a lot of talk about how weak Maliki is," he said. "This kind of talk has disappeared."

But Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said a dangerous mind-set remains. "You still have a dominant Shi'ite power structure that doesn't want to cede any power," Katzman said. "Then you have Sunnis who are committed to overturn their humiliations [of Saddam Hussein's overthrow]. The fundamental dynamics have not changed."

O'Malley, who worked on reconciliation efforts in South Africa and in Northern Ireland, invited leaders from those places to the Finland sessions - and to Baghdad tomorrow - to share their experiences of negotiating.

But the level of security required - including walls around segregated neighborhoods and eight checkpoints to enter the Green Zone for tomorrow's meeting - serve as a grim reminder of how far Iraq has to go. "People feel things are getting better," O'Malley said. "But for five years the kind of violence they have endured means that the way their minds work and their feelings haven't caught up."