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Los Angeles Times
April 20, 2004
Plan for Cease-Fire Reached in Fallouja
U.S. and Iraqis agree on a preliminary resolution to the city's uprising. Honduras announces it will pull out of the country.
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Tony Perry, Times Staff Writers
BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi representatives agreed on a preliminary plan for a full cease-fire in the embattled city of Fallouja, even as insurgent attacks on Marine positions continued late into Monday evening.
Marines besieging the city agreed not to resume their offensive into the heart of the town if "all persons" turned in their rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, missiles and other heavy weapons.
Residents could keep their AK-47 assault rifles for personal protection, the Marines said.
The joint communique from U.S. and Iraqi leaders who have been negotiating the fate of Fallouja also modified the terms of the U.S.-imposed curfew, allowing the sick and wounded to get to hospitals and pledging to facilitate the burial of the dead, among other steps.
As of today, 50 civilian families a day are to be allowed to enter the encircled city, which experienced a mass exodus during the initial Marine strike to counter the insurgency.
U.S. officials stressed that Marines could quickly launch an assault deep into the city's center if insurgents did not disarm. "There is also a very clear understanding … that should this agreement not go through, Marine forces are more than prepared to carry through with military operations," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S.-led coalition's chief military spokesman, said at a Baghdad news briefing.
Volleys of rockets and mortar rounds were fired at Marine positions late Monday, though there was no immediate report of casualties.
In other action, representatives of the U.S.-funded television station Al Iraqiya said a correspondent and his driver were shot and killed by U.S. troops near the northern city of Samarra. A military spokesman said the incident was being investigated. The Army last month acknowledged killing two employees of the Al Arabiya satellite channel in Baghdad in what the Army called an accidental shooting.
Meanwhile, the president of Honduras announced that he would withdraw his nation's 370 troops from Iraq "in the shortest possible time."
"I have told the coalition countries that the troops are going to return from Iraq," President Ricardo Maduro said in a speech on national TV and radio. "I have ordered … the carrying out of the decision taken in the shortest possible time."
Honduran lawmakers had expressed concern for the troops' safety because of the recent wave of violence. Soldiers from Honduras have been serving with a Spanish-led humanitarian brigade in central Iraq since last summer. They had been scheduled to leave at the end of June.
Honduras' decision comes a day after Spain's new prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said he would pull his 1,300 troops out of Iraq. On Monday, President Bush spoke by phone with Zapatero and expressed regret over the decision.
"The president urged that the Spanish withdrawal take place in a coordinated manner that does not put at risk other coalition forces," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said. "And the president stressed the importance of carefully considering future actions to avoid giving false comfort to terrorists or enemies of freedom in Iraq."
In Baghdad, Kimmitt said the Spaniards would be missed, but he stressed that other troops would be found to patrol the Spanish area of operations south of Baghdad, which has been volatile in recent weeks. "There will not be a security vacuum in that area," he said.
Coalition officials said they would like to avoid more large-scale bloodshed in Fallouja, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city that has emerged as a symbol for anti-U.S. sentiment. More than 600 Iraqis are said to have been killed in the U.S. assault, which was halted amid fierce opposition, with most of the city still in insurgent hands.
U.S. officials also appear to be seeking a negotiated resolution to the other pending Iraqi crisis: the Army's determination to capture or kill Muqtada Sadr, a militant Shiite Muslim cleric wanted on charges that he was involved in the slaying of a rival religious leader last spring. Thousands of militiamen have taken up Sadr's cause and vowed to battle U.S. forces to the death.
The Army has put off for now its plans to send a force into the holy city of Najaf, where Sadr and his closest advisors are believed to be holed up.
"We can wait," said Army Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, who is leading the more than 2,000 soldiers recently deployed outside Najaf. "They will still be there. Ultimately we still want Iraqis to solve this problem."
A frontal assault into Najaf, site of Shiite Islam's holiest shrine, would enrage the nation's Shiite majority, even those hostile to Sadr. And additional civilian deaths in Fallouja could further galvanize opponents of the occupation throughout Iraq. Still, U.S. officials warned again that their patience was wearing thin in Fallouja.
"Time is running out," said Dan Senor, chief spokesman for the coalition. "There's only so much longer we can continue the process, or we have to reengage, reinitiate operations."
Iraqi participants in the Fallouja negotiations voiced hope that the U.S. stance had modified.
"The most important thing is that the coalition forces have no wish to attack any people in Fallouja anymore," Hachim Hassani, an acting member of the Iraqi Governing Council and the lead negotiator in brokering a cease-fire, told the Al Jazeera satellite channel.
The agreement is largely contingent upon the willingness of residents of Fallouja to surrender their extensive arsenals. However, relatively few residents have turned in arms in recent days in response to the U.S. request, Marines said.
The accord speaks of the need to restore "law and order" in Fallouja and calls for "thorough Iraqi investigations" into recent criminal acts, including the brutal killing of four American civilian contractors last month. That grisly event, images of which were broadcast worldwide, was the catalyst for the Marine assault on the town.
An "urgent" task, the agreement states, involves the rebuilding of the Iraqi police forces and civil defense units in Fallouja. Negotiators envision joint patrols with Iraqi officers and U.S. troops — though this step would clearly require a major shift in attitude among area lawmen, many of whom refused to join the Marines in their recent actions.
For months, police in Fallouja have sought to distance themselves from the unpopular occupiers, demanding that troops stay away from the town.
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McDonnell reported from Baghdad and Perry from Fallouja. Times staff writer Maura Reynolds in Washington and researcher Said Rifai in The Times' Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.
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