Baghdad ? Iraq is on the verge of giving amnesty to low-level Iraqi insurgents, but that amnesty will not apply to guerrillas who took on leadership roles in the resistance or those suspected of killing coalition or Iraqi troops, a key Interior Ministry official said Monday.

In the Sunni Muslim flashpoint city of Fallujah, meanwhile, U.S. jets launched an air strike on a suspected terrorist safe house, the fifth missile strike on an alleged hideout for foreign fighters in that city since June 19.

The Associated Press reported at least 10 people died in the air strike. The series of U.S. air strikes in Fallujah has targeted militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida-linked militant thought to be behind a wave of suicide car bombings and other attacks in Iraq, as well as the decapitations of American Nicholas Berg and South Korean Kim Sun Il.

Striking a balance

On Monday, Iraq’s week-old interim government was struggling to craft an amnesty law that would help neutralize the insurgency without upsetting Washington, which has 138,000 troops maintaining security in the country and billions of dollars tied into reconstruction projects.

The difficulties top Iraqi officials are having in fashioning an effective, even-handed amnesty became evident Monday morning. The government called a news conference to announce the new law then abruptly canceled it minutes before it was supposed to start.

The course that the government takes on amnesty likely will be one of its most important decisions.

Kidnappings, car bombings, roadside bomb attacks and other violence committed by insurgents against Iraqis and coalition forces pose the biggest threat to Iraq’s prospects for economic rebirth. Iraqi officials have said the amnesty must be inclusive enough to cripple the insurgency but not so broad that it keeps violent criminals from being held accountable for their actions.

In its current draft form, the amnesty law would allow nonleadership insurgents to reintegrate into Iraqi society, Sabah Kadhim, a top adviser for Iraq’s Interior Ministry, said during an interview Monday.

“The principle of this law is to persuade the individuals who had been deceived and brainwashed into believing they were fighting for a cause, which at the time during the occupation had some logic to it,” Kadhim said. “Our point is, the logic is no longer there. We have restored sovereignty.”

Those deemed ineligible for amnesty would include anyone who held positions of leadership in the insurgency and anyone believed to be responsible for the killings of coalition troops, Iraqi security forces or Iraqi civilians, Kadhim said.

“Murder is murder, so no one will be released because of that,” Kadhim said. “That is very clear. We as a government will not tolerate that at all.”

Kadhim declined to discuss in further detail what shape the amnesty law would take. Left unanswered were questions about how the law would define insurgency leadership roles.

Also unresolved is whether the new amnesty law would apply to insurgents now in the custody of U.S. or coalition forces. “This is what we’re looking at the moment,” Kadhim said. “The question of who is under the control of the U.S. and who is under our control — the ministers of justice and human rights are looking at this.”

Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the No. 2 U.S. general in Iraq, said he thought an amnesty plan, in theory, could be “very successful.”

“There are people out there (in the insurgency) that are open to the idea of ‘Let’s quit this. We’re tired of it. Let’s figure out a way so we can all participate in this new government,”‘ Metz said in a recent interview.

The challenge for Iraqi officials working on the law, Metz said, will be defining who is eligible for amnesty.

One of the trickiest issues for Iraqi officials working on the amnesty law is how the government will deal with Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and his al-Mahdi Army. Sadr’s militants have been responsible for fierce fighting that killed scores of U.S. and coalition troops in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum and in the southern Shiite holy cities of Najaf, Karbala and Kufa.

Though Iraqi officials have tried to persuade the junior cleric to join the political process and disarm his militia, Sadr has vowed to resist the new Iraqi government and the presence of U.S. and coalition troops. He issued a statement over the weekend vowing to “continue resisting oppression and occupation to our last drop of blood.”

On Monday, Sadr’s camp softened its rhetoric. A spokesman, Mahmoud al-Soudani, said Sadr’s remarks were not meant to be construed as a call to arms.

Speaking over the weekend on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said talks between the government and Sadr were continuing.

Kadhim said a final version of the amnesty law would be announced within a day or two. It will be the key component of a new national security law expected to include provisions for curfews and other emergency measures.

Elsewhere Monday, the U.S. military released little information about the air strike in Fallujah, except to say coalition forces launched the attack at 7:15 p.m. Iraq time and six missiles — four with 500-pound bombs and two with 1,000-pound bombs — were used.

The air strikes in Fallujah have killed dozens of people that the U.S. military contends were linked to al-Zarqawi, who remains at large. The U.S. recently raised the reward for information leading to his arrest to $25 million from $10 million.

Also, AP reported that France and Iraq will restore diplomatic ties severed by Saddam Hussein in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. Allawi met Monday with France’s highest diplomatic representative in Iraq, the French Foreign Ministry said.