"No Iraqi will be allowed to have heavy
weapons," Defense Minister Hazim Shaalan told the Saudi Okaz newspaper.
A cash-for-weapons program kicked off in the Baghdad slums
of Sadr City this week after a radical Shi'ite militia promised to disarm under
a plan to end fighting with U.S. forces there.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who visited Baghdad this
week, gave a cautious verdict on the scheme.
"It is true that some elements are turning in some weapons,"
he said in Bucharest. "One hopes that over time all of them will. But until that
happens, why, we have to just be hopeful."
Shaalan said insurgents must disarm in all Iraqi towns and
cities, including Falluja, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim insurgency.
"Terrorists are controlling a large part of Falluja and we
will get them sooner or later. There are non-Iraqis among them, they are Arabs,"
the paper quoted him as saying.
U.S. troops called in air strikes on one neighborhood of the
rebel-held city during fighting on Tuesday evening. A doctor reported eight dead
from the violence, which coincided with peace talks aimed at deploying Iraqi
security forces in Falluja.
"We are very close to reaching a final settlement. Our main
condition is that the U.S. army does not enter Falluja," the city's negotiator
Khaled al-Jumaili told Reuters on Wednesday.
Repeated U.S. air raids have hit the city in recent weeks,
most of them aimed at buildings the military says are used by foreign militants
loyal to Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"We hope the strikes can be temporarily suspended to...give
us a chance to conclude negotiations and then the National Guard can enter
Falluja," Shaalan said.
Previous truce deals have failed to calm Falluja.
Iraq's daily round of bombings, kidnappings and fighting has
blighted postwar reconstruction efforts and cast doubt on whether the January
elections can go ahead on time.
POLLS TO PROCEED
Electoral Commission officials said Wednesday they were
confident the polls would be held and outlined plans for voters and political
parties to register next month.
Asked if the elections would take place on time, spokesman
Farid Ayar told a news conference: "I hope so. We are confident. We have to hold
the elections by January 31."
In the latest violence, guerrillas killed three U.S.
soldiers in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday night, the U.S.
military said. In western Baghdad early Wednesday, another American was killed
in an attack. The fatalities took the U.S. combat death toll to 821 since last
year's U.S.-led invasion.
Gunmen killed an Iraqi police captain, Saadi Rahim, on his
way to work in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, on Wednesday, according to
his nephew, who was wounded.
Iraq could loom large in the final U.S. presidential
campaign debate later on Wednesday, when George W. Bush defends his policies
against Democrat John Kerry.
Though senior U.S. officials have acknowledged Saddam
Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled or
proven links with al Qaeda, Bush has argued Iraq and the world are still better
off with the former dictator's removal.
Fresh evidence of atrocities from the Saddam era has emerged
at a "killing field" near Hatra, in northern Iraq, which could help convict the
captured dictator of crimes against humanity.
Investigators, concluding their first scientific exhumation
of a mass grave, this week showed reporters nine trenches in a dry riverbed
containing at least 300 bodies, and possibly thousands, including unborn babies
and toddlers clutching toys.
"It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field,"
said Greg Kehoe, a U.S. lawyer appointed by the White House to work with the
Iraqi Special Tribunal set up to try Saddam.
"I've been doing grave sites for a long time, but I've never
seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason,"
added Kehoe, who spent five years in the Balkans.
The victims are believed to be Kurds killed in 1987-88.
Saddam, 67, who is expected to face trial for crimes
including genocide next year, underwent a hernia operation at a U.S.-run
hospital in Baghdad two weeks ago and has made a full recovery, a U.S. military
official said on Wednesday.
