BAGHDAD, Nov 26: Some Iraqi guerilla groups say they are ready to engage in the political process, a top aide to President Jalal Talabani said on Saturday, after the government warned of a renewed offensive against militants.

“We have received calls from people who said they belonged to armed groups,” Mr Talabani’s national security adviser Lt-Gen Wafeeq al Sammarai said, adding that the callers ‘said they were ready to join the political process’.

They included Islamists and Baathists from the now banned party of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, said Gen Sammarai, who was the head of Iraqi military intelligence in the 1991 war.

At a meeting of Iraqi political leaders in Cairo last weekend, Mr Talabani said he was prepared to talk to guerillas in a bid to end the deadly resistance that has gripped the country since Saddam’s downfall in 2003.

“If those who describe themselves as the Iraqi resistance want to get in touch with me, they are welcome to do so,” Mr Talabani said.

The Cairo meeting was held to pave the ground for a reconciliation conference next year in Baghdad and to encourage Sunnis, seen as backing the resistance, to join the political process instead.

Gen Sammarai gave no further details on which groups might have been in touch, or how much of a following they might have within the resistance, which US forces describe as multi-faceted.

The announcement comes amid a wave of suicide bombings and sectarian-related shootings that have left dead at least 180 people over the past week.

In violence on Saturday, three Iraqi soldiers were shot dead north of Baghdad and a US contractor and four Iraqis were wounded in a bomb blast targeting a US military convoy in the capital.—AFP