Cease-Fire Holds in Najaf; Amnesty Sought

Let's hope they can come up with an amicable agreement. They certainly have to be tiring of the problems of late. Hopefully peace will prevail

The insurgents want this:
Ahmed al-Shaibany, an al-Sadr spokesman in Najaf, blamed the talks' failure on the Americans, who were not participating in the negotiations.
``There are particular points and demands we had that we specifically wanted the Americans to sign on, but they refused,'' he said.
Among those demands, he said, was U.S. compensation for the families of those killed in confrontations with the Americans.

after they have done this:

The U.S. military said the fighting began when al-Sadr's militants began attacking a Najaf police station.

I am sorry if my attitude offends anybody's sympathy for a bunch of cold bloodied killers, but if the militants don't stop their continued disruptive actions then they all deserve to die.
Saddam may have been evil, that I do not dispute, but he knew that a very strong hand brought respect.
It's ironic that the military will have to act almost like Saddam to win eventual peace, but there we go.

Delegates at Iraq's National Conference called Monday for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to abandon his uprising against U.S. and Iraqi troops and pull his fighters out of a holy shrine in Najaf.

Al-Sadr and his followers have fought U.S. and Iraqi forces from within the Imam Ali shrine, one of Shia Islam's most sacred sites, and fighting has spread to other parts of the country.