Hurst, Steven R., and Qassim Abdul-Zahra. “Insurgents offer to halt attacks in Iraq.” Guardian unlimited, June 28, 2006.

Summary: Eleven Iraqi resistance organizations, claiming to represent about seventy percent of the insurgents, have responded to a reconciliation plan proposed by Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, by offering to stop their attacks if the United States agrees to withdraw all of its soldiers from Iraq within two years, stops military operations against the resistance, compensates Iraqis for the deaths, injuries, and property damage caused by American and Iraqi military forces, and releases the resistance fighers that it has detained, and if the Iraqi government lifts the restrictions it has placed on former members of the Baath party and allows military officers who served under Saddam Hussein to serve in the Iraqi military.

Even though al-Maliki's reconciliation plan also calls for a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, his initial response to the resistance organizations' offer was to claim that a fixed timetable is “unrealistic.” Of course, as Juan Cole points out, the current Republican administration would block any agreement that included the withdrawal of American troops in any case.