U.S., Shiite leaders meet to end Sadr City fighting

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. military officials and representatives of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held talks Sunday aimed at reducing violence in the restive Baghdad slum of Sadr City, a day after clashes there killed 10 people, officials said.

British forces in the southern city of Basra, also the site of recent fighting, held similar talks with al-Sadr officials there.

Both areas had erupted in violence after U.S. forces and al-Sadr's militants began fighting in the holy city of Najaf three weeks ago, and the talks Sunday appeared to be an effort by both sides to expand on the peace deal that ended the Najaf crisis Friday.

An agreement, at least in Sadr City, remained elusive, however, with al-Sadr's aides demanding a U.S. pullout from the neighborhood, a condition U.S. officials rejected.

Meanwhile, guerrillas launched an attack on the country's oil infrastructure in the south, blowing up several oil export pipelines and cutting already curtailed exports to about 500,000 barrels a day, an oil official said.

In the north, insurgents ambushed U.S. troops with rocket-propelled grenades near Mosul, sparking gunbattles that killed two attackers and wounded 34 civilians, the U.S. military said.

U.S. forces and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia have been fighting for weeks in Sadr city, the east Baghdad slum named for the rebel cleric's father. Though peace descended on Najaf on Friday, skirmishes continued Saturday in Baghdad, with militants firing mortars and automatic weapons at U.S. troops and tanks in the impoverished neighborhood.

In response, al-Sadr representatives, tribal leaders, Shiite politicians, government officials and U.S. military officers met to discuss the violence.

No agreement on weaponsThe head of the tribal negotiating team, Naim al-Bakhati, told reporters that all sides -- including al-Sadr representatives -- had agreed that damaged areas there be rebuilt, U.S. troops withdraw from the area except for their normal patrols and that Iraqi police be allowed to enter the slum.

But "there was no agreement on the Mahdi Army handing over their weapons," al-Bakhati said.

Sadr City police chief Col. Maarouf Moussa Omran said all sides agreed to observe a one-day truce until this morning to give the Iraqi government time to discuss the results of the meeting.

But Lt. Col. Jim Hutton, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division, said "there has been no agreement of any kind," adding that the talks were not negotiations.

Sadr City remained relatively peaceful Sunday. Fighting Saturday in the slum killed 10 people and wounded 126, said Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official.

In Basra, a British commander held talks with al-Sadr's top representative in the city, Sheik Asaad al-Basri, and the pro-al-Sadr deputy governor, Salam al-Maliki.

British Maj. Charlie Mayo, a coalition spokesman in Basra, described the meeting as a routine "interaction between the local British commanders and respected tribal leaders."

Before the talks started, al-Basri said "we want to avoid bloodshed but we have conditions that we will put forward to the British" including an amnesty for Mahdi Army members and compensation for victims of recent clashes.

Al-Basri also said he wanted British forces to keep out of the city center and use mutually agreed roads to reach their bases around the city.

The latest attack on Iraq's vulnerable oil infrastructure occurred Sunday when assailants blew up several export pipelines in al-Radgha, 30 miles southwest of Basra, an official at the state-run South Oil Co. said on condition of anonymity.

Plumes of black smoke billowed from the area as firefighters struggled to extinguish the flames. The pipelines connect the Rumeila oilfields with export storage tanks in the Faw peninsula.

Iraq exports about 90 percent of its oil out of the south and sabotage last week had already halved normal exports to about 900,000 barrels a day. Sunday's attack cut exports to about 500,000 barrels a day, a second official with the company said on condition of anonymity.

If the fires aren't put out soon and other sabotaged lines aren't repaired, exports could be halted entirely, the official said.

Insurgents have launched repeated attacks on Iraq's vital oil industry in a bid to damage reconstruction efforts and undermine the interim government, which relies heavily on oil income.

On Saturday, saboteurs blew up another pipeline in the West Qurna oilfields, 90 miles north of Basra.

Near the northern city of Mosul early Sunday, insurgents holed up in a mosque attacked U.S. patrols with rocket-propelled grenades twice in three hours, said Army Capt. Angela Bowman.

The violence occurred just outside Tal Afar, 30 miles west of Mosul. Soldiers returned fire during both assaults, killing two of the attackers, she said. No U.S. casualties were reported.

Scores of people in the area sleeping outdoors on rooftops to escape the summer heat were wounded "by flying debris and broken glass" during the violence, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Citing a doctor at a hospital in Tal Afar, the military said 34 civilians were wounded, 26 of them women and children. Provincial health chief Rabie Yasin al-Khalil said that 32 civilians were injured.

Also Sunday, French President Jacques Chirac said his country would spare no effort to free two French reporters held hostage in Iraq by militants demanding that France scrap its ban on Islamic head scarves in state schools. He dispatched his foreign minister to work for the journalists' release.

Chirac sought to appeal to the kidnappers with an implicit reminder that France opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But he did not directly respond to their demand that the head scarf ban be overturned within 48 hours.

In other developments Sunday:

Two Turkish hostages, engineers Ali Daskin and Abdullah Ozdemir, were freed by Iraqi militants and taken to the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official said. The men were released after their companies, in response to the kidnappers' demands, agreed to pull out of Iraq.

U.S. troops in the city of Samarra killed an insurgent who had stolen a truck at gunpoint, the U.S. military said.