BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki offered amnesty and cash payments to Sunni insurgents in the northern city of Mosul on Friday.
Sunni fighters would have to turn in their heavy weapons — anything beyond rifles and pistols — within 10 days. The offer applies to Mosul and the surrounding region, Nineveh Province, a troubled area inhabited by Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
The announcement follows a successful offensive in the southern city of Basra earlier this spring, which also began with an amnesty offer.
While insurgents must turn in weapons to qualify for amnesty and the cash, the amount of which was not disclosed, Mr. Maliki said, they could keep one pistol or one rifle per household, which is consistent with Iraqi laws on gun possession.
Mr. Maliki said the offer was for “those who were deluded and used arms against the state.” It would not apply to insurgents who had harmed civilians, he said.
The plan suggested that the government was probably preparing to escalate a military offensive already under way in the city, Mahmood Othman, a member of Parliament with the Kurdish Alliance bloc, said in a telephone interview.
Iraqi and American security forces believe that Mosul is the last urban stronghold of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence officials say is foreign-led. The group still operates in pockets elsewhere.
Mr. Othman said that the government’s offer, which given what happened in Basra might indicate the likelihood of a stepped-up offensive, could enable Sunni extremist leaders to escape Mosul, possibly to nearby Syria. “The element of surprise is gone,” he said.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, the details of an attack on an Iranian Embassy convoy on Thursday remained muddled. The Iranian government blamed the United States for the shooting, in which four embassy employees were wounded. The Iranian government said in a statement that it would hold the United States responsible for the shooting as the occupying power in Iraq, The Associated Press reported.
The United States military issued a statement saying it was “in no way involved in this attack.”
It remained unclear who had fired shots at the cars. An employee of the Interior Ministry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the attack, said that Iraqi police officers at a checkpoint had shot at the Iranian cars in response to shots fired from them. In an official statement, the ministry said only that unidentified gunmen attacked the car, and that an investigation was continuing.
Mr. Maliki’s government has been tilting away from its ties to Iranian-backed Shiite groups, like the militias in Basra that were the target of the spring offensive.
Prayers read on Friday at mosques in the Sadr City area of Baghdad supported a truce between followers of the Iranian-supported cleric Moktada al-Sadr and the Iraqi military.
A spokesman for Mr. Sadr, Salman Al-Furaiji, said in an interview that Mahdi Army militiamen would not attack Iraqi Army troops if they passed north of a concrete dividing wall in Sadr City, but that American soldiers would be attacked north of the wall.
And in the western Sunni city of Falluja, a suicide bomber detonated a truck filled with explosives outside a police station, wounding four policemen and five civilians. The authorities imposed a partial curfew in Falluja.
New Iraqi Offensive about to be launched
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