Maliki Working For Accord On Keeping US Troops

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Boston Globe
September 30, 2008
Presses for longer stay for forces
By John Daniszewski, Associated Press
BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday that the government is ready to compromise to reach a security accord with the United States because Iraq still needs American troops despite the drop in violence.
In an interview, Maliki said neither he nor Iraq's parliament will accept any pact that does not serve the country's national interests. A poorly constructed plan would provoke so much discord in Iraq that it could threaten his government's survival, he said.
Maliki said, however, that he is firmly committed to reaching an accord that would allow US troops to remain in the country beyond next year.
"We regard negotiating and reaching such an agreement as a national endeavor, a national mission, a historic one. It is a very important agreement that involves the stability and the security of the country and the existence of foreign troops. It has a historic dimension," Maliki said.
In violence yesterday, gunmen attacked a tribal sheik, Ahmed Salim, wounding him and killing two of his sons in the village of Rasoul in Diyala Province, police said.
Separately, an American soldier was killed by small-arms fire during a patrol Monday afternoon in northern Baghdad, the military said.
The Iraqi prime minister spoke at length about the difficulty he faces in trying to negotiate the accord that would set the terms for the US presence in Iraq for years to come.
Supporters of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr oppose the accord, arguing US forces should leave Iraq as soon as possible. Neighboring Iran also has been speaking out vociferously against a long-term US presence in Iraq.
"Pressures are coming from east and west and north and south, but we are determined to rise above all these difficulties and pressures because we want this agreement to be passed," Maliki said, "and we will go ahead despite all that is being said."
The prime minister also noted with gratitude the high cost paid by American taxpayers, the US military and the forces of other coalition members to secure Iraq's freedom over the past five years.
"We appreciate and we respect their sacrifices," he said of the US troops killed, adding that their deaths would act as a bridge between the two countries.
Maliki said a compromise was near on the thorny issue of legal jurisdiction over US forces. He said it would involve an offer of limited immunity for American forces. "When they are not performing a military operation, they are outside their camps, the legal jurisdiction would be in the hands of the Iraqi judiciary," Maliki said.
He said the deal has been slowed by electoral politics in the United States and also in Iraq, where provincial elections are due to take place by Jan. 31.
If the talks fail, or if parliament eventually refused to approve the accord, the US fallback probably would be to seek a resolution at the UN Security Council authorizing a renewal of the mandate for coalition troops to operate in Iraq. The current UN mandate expires Dec. 31.
In a separate development yesterday, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said Iraq has bought 12 new US-built reconnaissance planes to monitor militants and the borders, a small step in the country's attempt to reassert itself in air space now controlled by US-led forces.
A ministry spokesman, Major General Mohammed al-Askari, said six King Air planes had been delivered and the other six are expected soon.
 
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