BAGHDAD, April 30: President Jalal Talabani has met representatives of seven armed groups and is optimistic they may agree to lay down their arms, his office said on Sunday. “I think we may reach an agreement with seven armed groups that visited me and I met with them,” his office said in a statement with indicating when the meeting took place.

Talabani’s spokesman Kamran Qaradaghi refused to identify the seven groups, although they were presumed to be Sunni Arab insurgents.

It was the first time a senior Iraqi official has acknowledged meeting figures from the insurgency, although US officials have said privately they have conferred directly with Iraqis who claimed to have contacts with insurgents. However, Ibrahim al-Shammari, spokesman for the Islamic Army in Iraq, denied that his group had met Mr Talabani or any US officials.

“Our strategic choice is to resist the occupation by armed force,” al-Shammari told Al-Jazeera television. “We neither met the Americans, nor the US ambassador, nor with the (Iraqi) government because it is an illegal government with no credibility.”

Last year, Talabani, a Kurd, offered to meet with representatives of insurgent groups except Al Qaeda in Iraq or Saddam Hussein loyalists.

The statement said Talabani made the comments on Saturday during a cultural festival in Kurdistan, the Kurdish-self ruled area in the north.

Talabani said American officials had met “some armed groups,” but Qaradaghi said there were no Americans present during the meeting with the seven groups.

The statement also quoted Talabani as saying Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had declared a “genocide against the Iraqi population.”—AP