BAGHDAD, July 17 (AFP) - US ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte on Saturday said an expected amnesty for low-level criminals would help to unite the country, but it would not include those who harmed the US-led military here.
"The basic notion of an amnesty, to the extent that it involves reaching out to alienated elements of this society who might be willing to come back under the political tent, has a political logic to it that makes sense to me," Negroponte told a group of journalists at a lunch.
"This is part of an approach that involves reaching out to a wider spectrum of political forces in this society to the extent that it helps bring some of the fence-sitters ... under the tent," he said, speaking at the newly opened American embassy in Baghdad -- Washington's largest.
A perception the law, due to be unveiled by the interim government imminently, would also pardon people who attacked US soldiers or other members of the large foreign military presence in the country was wrong, he said.
"There may have been at some point some language that was ambiguous in this regard and led itself to the interpretation that somehow amnesty would be granted to people who had sought to harm coalition forces," Negroponte said.
"My understanding is that that ambiguity is no longer in the draft law."
Iraq's interim President Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar said in an interview published on Monday that the government would offer an amnesty to insurgents who had fought US-led forces but were ready to lay down their arms.
"We are offering an amnesty definitely, for people who have not committed too many atrocious acts; everybody except murderers, rapists, and kidnappers," Yawar said in an interview with Britain's Financial Times newspaper.
Yawar said the government was trying to separate "the bad elements from the good" in Fallujah, a centre of Sunni opposition west of Baghadad, "without shedding any innocent blood."
A violent insurgency that claimed thousands of Iraqi lives and killed hundreds of American soldiers flared up during the 14-month US-led occupation that ended on June 28 when sovereignty was handed to the caretaker government.
The amnesty will form part of a raft of new measures designed to restore stability in the country under Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.