corrente

A summary of the text of the statement released by the Fallujah negotiators:

The parties agreed that Coalition Forces do not intend to resume offensive operations if all persons inside the city turn in their heavy weapons. Individual violators will be dealt with on an individual basis.

The parties reaffirmed the absolute need to restore law and order in the city as quickly as possible, to rebuild the judicial system, and to initiate thorough Iraqi investigations into criminal acts committed in the city in this period of instability, which includes the killing and mutilation of the four American contractors and the attack on the Iraqi Police Station in February.
(via AP)

We'll see.

My picture is that the RPG owners are about as likely to turn them in as NRA members would be to, well, not exercise their Second Amendment rights. But who knows? Readers?

NOTE Meanwhile, in Najaf, we seem to be settling in for a longer seige. And Chalabi is leaving the sinking ship:

PETER CAVE: I spoke to Ahmed Chalabi from the Governing Council over the weekend and he said that the security arrangements the Americans had made had collapsed. That they'd basically wasted their time for a year and they had to completely rethink, and his point of view, and it was a view I think shared in some ways by the General, was that they've really got to do something about training Iraqi troops to take over because the troops they've trained so far have been a bit of a failure. They've deserted their post, they've joined the enemy, they're under-trained, they're under-equipped and have no morale.

MARK COLVIN: Yeah, that was interesting though coming from Ahmed Chalabi, wasn't it? Because so much reporting of what the US has done there has suggested that Ahmed Chalabi has really been in the ear of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, all those people all the way through. So, to what extent was he just now shifting his own ground, and pretending that it was nothing to do with him?

PETER CAVE: Well perhaps it's slightly cynical, but he's going to be out of a job in a couple of months, when the Interim Governing Council is disbanded in favour of the government to be set up by the United Nations to take them through to elections in January. So I think Mr Chalabi who has been seen right along by a lot of Iraqis as being a little bit too close to the Americans, has been working fairly hard, certainly over the last week or so, to distance himself from them.

Talk about playing both ends against the middle!