McClatchy: U.S. offers to host future meetings of Iraqis opposed to al Qaida (in Green Zone)

[babylonsister]

And we know how safe that green zone has become...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/17357.html

U.S. offers to host future meetings of Iraqis opposed to al Qaida
By Mike Drummond | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Tue, June 26, 2007


BAGHDAD - A U.S. military official said Tuesday that the U.S. government will consider hosting meetings of Iraqis opposed to al Qaida in Iraq inside the fortified Green Zone, one day after a suicide attack at a downtown Baghdad hotel killed Sunni sheiks who were considered crucial to a U.S.-backed effort to counter radical Sunni militants.

Monday’s bombing at the Mansour Hotel on the west bank of the Tigris River, just outside the Green Zone, killed 13, including about six members of the Anbar Salvation Council, a coalition of Sunni tribal leaders cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi government forces. The Sunnis reportedly were going to meet with Shiite clerics to discuss reconciliation between the groups.

Among the dead was Sheik Fasal al Gaood, a council leader and former governor of Anbar province who’d become key to U.S. efforts to win tribal support for efforts to push al Qaida in Iraq insurgents from Anbar. U.S. military officials originally had rejected Gaood’s efforts to ally himself with the United States against al Qaida, but embraced him last year in a strategy shift that emphasizes alliances with Iraq’s web of local power brokers.

Sunni sheiks from the Anbar region west of Baghdad have indicated many are split over to what extent they should cooperate with the U.S. military.

“We can’t guarantee that (a suicide bombing of allies) won’t happen in the future,” Army spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Tuesday. “A suicide bomber with a suicide vest, if that’s what it was, is hard to stop.”

Nonetheless, “You do what you can to mitigate those risks,” Garver said. From now on, that may mean hosting alliance meetings inside the safer confines of the Green Zone.

more...

[Bonhomme Richard]

1. "will consider" is the operative phrase.

What they are actually saying is that they do not trust these Iraqi's. That is why it wasn't held in the green zone in the first place.