After hours of negotiations in the smoke-filled reception room of a sheikh's villa in the western Baghdad district of Hay al-Amil, community leaders-among them shopkeepers, lawyers, teachers and a police captain-thought they had finally clinched a deal. Displaced Sunni families in the district could return to their homes across the street in a mainly Shia housing estate. And Shia families who had been kicked out of their homes on the mainly Sunni side could go back to their old properties too. Both sides would be honour-bound to guarantee the safety of those who returned.
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