Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraq’s president says he and U.S. officials have met with leaders of seven of the country’s armed insurgent groups and believe they can be persuaded to end their rebellion, according to a summary of remarks released by his office Sunday.

President Jalal Talabani told a gathering of Iraqi and Arab intellectuals during a Kurdish cultural festival Saturday that he thinks some of the Sunni Arab insurgents now waging a bloody guerrilla war against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government can be persuaded to swap violence for a role in the political process.

“I think that it is possible to reach agreements with seven armed organizations which have visited me,” Talabani said, according to transcript of his remarks.

He did not identify the groups or say when the meetings took place, but he did say U.S. political officials had been involved.

Administration officials have previously acknowledged holding indirect meetings with some of the Iraqi Sunni groups fighting the U.S. occupation.

Talabani, himself a former Kurdish guerrilla warrior who for years battled against ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, did not suggest that a deal would end the violence plaguing Iraq. But many here say they believe the first step toward reducing the carnage is to isolate such foreign Islamic radicals as Abu Musab al-Zarqzawi, the Jordanian who refers to himself as the prince of al-Qaida in Iraq, from those nationalist Iraqi Sunnis using violence in an effort to win back power in an Iraq where the Shiite majority is now the dominant political force.

“The (al-)Zarqawis have declared a genocidal war against the Iraqi people,” Talabani said.

Iraqi soldiers from the first entirely Sunni basic training class form a pyramid during their graduation ceremony Sunday in Habaniyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad. With hopes for reduced violence resting largely upon drawing more Sunnis into the political process, Iraq's president said Sunday that he has engaged in talks with several Sunni insurgent groups, not including al-Qaida in Iraq or groups formerly allied with President Saddam Hussein.

“But there are groups other than the (predominately Sunni Saddam loyalists) and the (al-) Zarqawis who have joined the armed action on the basis of ousting the occupier, and those are the ones we are seeking to conduct dialogue with and to bring them into the political process.”

Suggestions that Talabani was poised to strike a deal with insurgent groups were immediately challenged by Ibrahim Shammari, spokesman of the Islamic Army in Iraq, who denied that his militant group had met Talabani or any U.S. officials.

“Our strategic choice is to resist the occupation by armed force,” Shammari told Al Jazeera television, according to the Qatar-based news channel’s Web site. “We neither met the Americans, nor the U.S. ambassador, nor with the government because it is an illegal government with no credibility.”

U.S. and Iraqi officials have been struggling to draw the country’s disparate religious and ethnic groups into a national unity government. Iraq’s new leaders have yet to agree on a power-sharing arrangement that would divide key ministries – from defense to domestic security, oil and foreign affairs – among competing blocs.

Negotiations continued Sunday, but no deal was expected for at least a few days. Iraqi officials announced they would convene parliament Wednesday, if only to demonstrate to a weary and frazzled country that they are capable of action.

“The Iraqi people are wondering why parliament is not holding any sessions despite the many issues to be discussed,” said Abbas Bayati, a prominent lawmaker in the Shiite bloc. “The parliament will convene to discuss many hot issues facing society. It is not justified for the parliament to wait for the government to be formed.”