12 Nepalese Hostages Are Slain In Iraq

Jit Bahadur Khadka, father of slain Nepalese hostage Ramesh Khadka, 19, is comforted by a relative at their home in a village near Katmandu. (Binod Joshi -- AP)

"I am renewing my solemn call for their release," French President Jacques Chirac said Tuesday in Russia, where he was attending a previously scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, two other opponents of the U.S.-led war. "Everything will be done to secure their release."

Meanwhile, a political aide to Moqtada Sadr said the rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric was serious about renouncing armed insurrection in favor of joining Iraq's nascent political process.

"Now, we concentrate on the necessity of political action," Ali Yassiri said in a telephone interview, referring to elections set for January. "The Sadr movement has many intellectuals and academics and educated elements. The main objective is to make the U.S. occupation withdraw and to cooperate with the other movements and any other side that adopts a political project."

For the second time in two days, Yassiri indicated that Sadr would convert his militia, the Mahdi Army, to peaceful purposes. He was speaking less than a week after the end of a three-week battle with U.S. forces in the southern city of Najaf that killed hundreds of the militia's fighters.

It remained unclear whether Yassiri spoke for Sadr, a mercurial and lately reclusive figure whose many aides sometimes contradict one another.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered conflicting assessments of Sadr's intentions. One said intelligence suggested that despite the peace rhetoric and a cease-fire in Sadr City, a vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, the militia was re-arming.

But another American, a diplomat in Baghdad, said Sadr had shown signs of being serious about turning to politics: "It's better than being chased all over the place. It's the only logical place for him to be." The diplomat declined to be identified on grounds that Iraqi officials were in sensitive negotiations with the Sadr camp.

In a bid to make peace more attractive, a group of senior Iraqi officials spent much of the day with tribal leaders of Sadr City, promising hundreds of millions of dollars in investment if the area was calm enough to ensure workers' safety.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said the government had allocated $115 million for rebuilding and improving the slum, where boulevards are piled with trash and open sewers turn dusty streets to green mud. In addition, "we have requested from the donating countries and the United States $150 million," Allawi told the gathering of about 100 Sadr City sheiks.

Ministers of health, housing, public works and education also promised improvements, provided the fighting ends. "We want to hire a lot of people, but they cannot go into the city," said Baghdad Mayor Alaa Mahmood Tamimi, who referred to an $85 million sewer project. "We can hire 30,000 contract workers if the security situation improves."

The sheiks appeared generally receptive to the plan, according a pool reporter who attended the meeting.

"After suffering and tyranny, it is time to start a new white page that is based on frankness," said Muhsin Mousawi, a local sheik, reading from a letter he said represented the opinions all of the tribal leaders. "What has happened is the overuse of violence without any legal basis. We did not come here to say to you our conditions, but to give our opinions and suggestions so we can participate in the construction of Sadr City."

"We need to employ the young men in order to fill their spare time, which the saboteurs could make use of," Mousawi said.

Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran and special correspondent Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.