Hopes of fresh Fallujah talks, Britain mulls troop move

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Hopes of fresh talks to avert a US military showdown in the Iraqi rebel hub of Fallujah rose with the release of a key negotiator as Britain mulled a redeployment of its troops.
US and Iraqi forces are desperate to crush a seething insurgency ahead of planned January elections and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has warned that Fallujah could face an invasion if it fails to hand over public enemy number one Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
The insurgency claimed more lives with officials reporting 13 Iraqis were killed in bomb attacks across the country over the past 24 hours as Muslims mark the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
More than 1,000 troops encircled Fallujah over the weekend, trading fire with rebel fighters and pounding targets from the air, but the situation appeared calmer on Monday, residents said.
Iraqi officials also said US troops had freed Sheikh Khaled Hamoud, a Fallujah leader involved in peace negotiations with the government, after holding him in detention since Friday.
"The Americans handed him over to us and we brought him back to his house," said Salam Mohammad, a police official from the city, which has been a focus point for near-nightly US air strikes.
It was not possible to obtain an immediate comment from the US army, which has neither confirmed nor denied it arrested Hamoud.
Sheikh Abdul Hamid Jadu, one of the negotiator's colleagues, described the release as a step forward to help revive stalled peace talks with the government.
"If the US bombing stops that would be another positive indication and the negotiating channels could be reopened," Jadu said. "From the begining we have been calling for a peaceful solution."
Hamoud is a member of a delegation working on a peace deal but negotiations failed on Thursday after Allawi ordered them to hand over the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, who has been blamed for a string of car bombings, hostage-takings and beheadings.
Residents said calm had returned to the Sunni Muslim bastion, west of Baghdad, with locals driving on the streets while insurgents and police stood guard.
"Soldiers weren't surrounding the city. There was no shelling," resident Abdullah Dulaimi told AFP. "There were no clashes since yesterday afternoon."
With the United States concentrating on Fallujah, Washington has asked its top ally Britain to send some of its Iraq contingent in the south to US-controlled hotspots near Baghdad, thereby freeing up their US counterparts, media reports said.
British Defence Minister Geoff Hoon is due to announce that Britain has received such a request in a speech to parliament at 1430 GMT -- a move opponents warned could be seen as a pre-election stunt to assist President George W. Bush.
However Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman insisted no decision had yet been taken, and rejected any link with the US poll.
"If this is about any elections it's about preparing for the Iraqi elections, not the US election," he said.
In contrast, Australia, another top US ally, said it has turned down a UN plea for a contribution to a military force to protect its personnel in Iraq but would train a contingent of Fijian troops to do the task.
The UN has been hampered by a shortage of adequately trained security forces in its aim to assume a wider role in the war-torn country and assist the Baghdad administration with planning for the national elections in January next year.
Cracks in the coalition were showing elsewhere, as Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini was quoted as saying that Italy plans to withdraw its troops from Iraq but not before elections and the establishment of a new government.
On the ground, at least six people, three of them Iraqi policemen, were killed when car packed with half a tonne of explosives exploded late Sunday as a police convoy drove past a coffee shop, the interior ministry said.
Another 26 people were wounded, among them policemen.
Muslims, who fast during the day, often stay out late at night during Ramadan, visiting with friends at places like the coffee house.
Another five Iraqi civilians were killed and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded on Sunday on a bridge in the nothern Iraqi city of Mosul, the US military said.
On Monday, two more Iraqis died in separate roadside bomb blasts around the Iraqi capital, police said, while overnight seven policemen, a woman and her three-year-old child were hurt in a gunfight between police and insurgents in Baquba.
Jordan issued a warning to its nationals to refrain from non-essential travel to neighbouring Iraq after reports that two more Jordanians had been abducted, while Australia said a television journalist was briefly held hostage in Baghdad over the weekend before being released unharmed.