MALIKI INTRODUCES HIS NATIONAL RECONCILIATION PLAN FOR IRAQ:

The 24-point plan offers an amnesty to some insurgents, but not those from groups who have targeted Iraqi civilians, such as al-Qaeda.

It outlines plans to disarm militias and beef up Iraqi security forces ahead of a takeover from coalition forces. . . .

But the BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad says there are concerns that the plan will not work as it does not seek reconciliation with those at the heart of the insurgency – the radical Islamists, many of them foreigners, who want Iraq to be the centre of a new Islamic empire.

Muir doesn’t seem to provide suggestions on how you achieve reconciliation with those guys. But the Sunnis seem to be on board with this deal, and if the native Sunni part of the insurgency drops out, the foreign terrorists will be left pretty isolated, I expect.

UPDATE: Arthur Chrenkoff emails:

Not only that, but notice the moving goal-posts – hasn’t the media been telling us in the past that “at the heart of the insurgency” there are the native Sunni nationalists who want the foreign occupiers out of the country, and that “the radical Islamists, many of them foreign terrorists” are merely a marginal phenomenon? Is that because there’s a chance that the new strategy of reconciliation will actually work to diminish the insurgency, so the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government have to be set up for failure according to a new and more demanding (if not an impossible) standard? On the positive side, it’s good to see that the BBC finally acknowledges that at least some of our enemies want to create “a new Islamic empire”.

Indeed.