WASHINGTON – Even as American and Iraqi soldiers were closing in on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the commander of the American forces in Iraq was trying to get Washington to lower the terrorist leader’s importance and profile.

In May, the Multinational Forces in Iraq sent a cable marked “secret” to the Pentagon requesting that the reward of $25 million for Zarqawi’s capture be reduced, according to military and administration officials.

The request was part of a recalculation by American war planners who had noticed that the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s role in the insurgency was gradually diminishing after Iraq’s foreign fighters, Islamists, and irredentist Baathists in January formed a new umbrella terror organization known as the Mujahadin Shura Council, or consultative council of holy warriors.

The new constellation of car bombers and kidnappers significantly reduced the role of Al Qaeda in Iraq, relegating it to just one of a number of groups under the leadership not of the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, but an Iraqi, Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.

This development, according to two military sources, persuaded America’s top generals that the enemy’s organization had become less reliant on a top-down hierarchy. The strategy to reduce the monetary reward for Zarqawi in part reflected a recognition that the man himself had been demoted.

“Some thought lowering the importance of Zarqawi by lowering the reward was worthy of looking at, but he has obviously been killed, so that discussion is moot,” a Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician, said.

Those words struck the same note as warnings from America’s top general in Iraq, George Casey, who said the death of Zarqawi last Thursday would not guarantee an end to the insurgency.

Yesterday, the congressman who has authored three rounds of amendments to the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program said the department would pay a reward in the coming weeks to those who helped locate Zarqawi.

“Some rewards will be paid for Zarqawi,” Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican of Illinois, said. “I don’t have the specifics. The administration is now working out who will get it and how much. As their appropriator who funds them, I asked them to let me know if they need more money to run the rewards program now that they are paying this out.”

Mr. Kirk said it was not uncommon for debate to arise in the administration on the amount of a reward given for locating top-level targets.

“I would like the reward for bin Laden lifted from $25 to $30 million,” Mr. Kirk said. “Each round you raise the price is more free media for the reward.” At the same time, the congressman conceded, raising the bounty on a terrorist also gives him free press attention and could enhance his stature.

The request to lower the price on Zarqawi’s head ultimately was not approved by the State Department, which oversees the Rewards for Justice program. But the fact that war planners were looking to downplay Zarqawi’s role may also have had strategic value in trying to capture him.

One analyst said yesterday that lowering the bounty was consistent with a campaign to make Zarqawi take more risks to cause him to disclose his location.

“I think this was a clever idea. I think he would have reacted more strongly,” a senior Iraq analyst at the Congressional Research Service, Kenneth Katzman, said. Mr. Katzman, who also worked at the CIA as a Persian Gulf analyst, said he thought Zarqawi might have compromised his location in April when he released a video in which he held a gun.

“A lot of people thought this was what led Jordanian intelligence to learn where he was. He put out the video because there were indications that he was weakened by the formation of the Mujahadin Shura,” Mr. Katzman said.

“Its formation indicated that the Iraqis were moving to clip Zarqawi’s wings to show him who was boss. There is speculation that he was weakened by that,” he added. “He put out the video to try to reassert himself. But that drew him out. The theory behind reducing the reward to prove he was still a leader was that this would force him to heighten his public profile.”

American officials have said Zarqawi’s own organization turned on him and provided intelligence that led American and Iraqi forces to track his spiritual mentor to Zarqawi’s safe house in Baqouba, where he ultimately met his end. Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq said last week that citizens in Baqouba also cooperated.

Yesterday, the Mujahadin Shura Council issued a statement dismissing the claim that Zarqawi’s death was a result of superior intelligence. “The crusaders knew nothing,” the Associated Press quoted from the statement. “They were surprised by the presence of the sheik [Zarqawi], God bless him.”