US in Talks with Terrorists

Iraq Realities Force Bush to Respond

The Times story, based on unidentified Iraqi sources, described two meetings earlier this month between an American team that "included senior military and intelligence officers, a civilian staffer from Congress and a representative of the US embassy in Baghdad." Representatives for insurgent groups included members of Ansar al-Sunna, "which has carried out numerous suicide bombings and killed 22 people in the dining hall of an American base at Mosul last Christmas," the story said.

"Washington seems to be gingerly probing for ways of defusing home-grown Iraqi opposition and of isolating the foreign Islamic militants who have flooded into Iraq to wage holy war against America under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq," said the Sunday Times.