Americans 'drop demand for handover of killers in Falluja atrocity'

After besieging the town of Falluja for more than a week, with the loss of an estimated 700 Iraqis as well as scores of Americans, the US has given up on its demand for the handover of those who killed four American security guards and mutilated their bodies, say senior Iraqis involved in talks in the town.

US officials originally made their surrender a prime aim of its onslaught on Falluja, which has turned into the biggest single combat operation since the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"US forces concentrated on one issue; the people who mutilated the dead and the necessity of handing them over. Now they've dropped the demand for their arrests," Mohammed Ubayd al-Kubaisi told the Guardian yesterday.

The professor, who is the dean of Islamic studies at Baghdad University and the vice-president of the Association of Muslim Scholars, is one of five men who travelled to the besieged town at the weekend for talks with local leaders.

Another negotiator came from his association, two were from the Iraqi Islamic party and the fifth represented Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, the head of a large Iraqi tribe.

The sheikh and the Islamic party serve on Iraq's US-approved governing council.

Their mission had the approval of the US authorities, who declared a ceasefire at the weekend and allowed the convoy of negotiators through their checkpoints.

The ceasefire has held intermittently for four days, and hundreds of families have escaped the town. Others came out of their homes to bury their dead in a mass grave in Falluja's football stadium.

Professor Kubaisi said local leaders were demanding an American withdrawal from all the roads into town, the restoration of basic services including water and electricity, and the repair of the main hospital which the marines occupied. In return, local Iraqi police would handle security.

US officials said yesterday the opening rounds of intra-Iraqi talks were only the start of a negotiating process. Dan Senor, the top US spokesman for the coalition, outlined US objectives. His language on the people who mutilated the bodies was softer than last week.

He called only for their "removal". US goals, he said, were "to see an end to the bloodshed, allow Iraqi officials to get in there, get in essential supplies from the government, and obviously we want to remove from Falluja the foreign fighters, international terrorists, and those Iraqis that support them, and that could include the individuals that killed the American contractors".

Imams in Falluja mosques denounced the atrocity as alien to Islam, and George Bush vowed to hunt down those responsible. There was no explanation yesterday for the change in policy, though officials may have concluded they would never catch them using current military tactics.

Thalfiqar Mahdi, a member of a volunteer team of doctors which has been working in Falluja since Thursday, gave a horrific account of conditions there. "The main hospital was taken over by the Americans," he said. "Doctors and patients had to evacuate to local health clinics.

"Over 1,000 people were wounded since the attack began, and patients had to lie on the ground because of a shortage of beds. We were doing operations in the open. But we didn't have enough sterilising equipment. About half the injured are women, children, and the elderly."