Iraq's Maliki to urge his Cabinet to endorse security pact with U.S.

One of the prime minister's trusted confidants says Maliki is ready to publicly endorse the bilateral agreement. If approved, it would call for American troops to leave the country at the end of 2011.

By Ned Parker

11:15 AM PST, November 14, 2008

Reporting from Baghdad — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki will urge his Cabinet to endorse a contentious security agreement with the United States and will give an address backing the pact ahead of a vote in parliament, one of his trusted confidants said today.

Maliki, who until now had not endorsed the agreement and had criticized U.S. negotiating positions during the summer, decided to publicly support the accord after U.S. officials accepted most of the changes to the text requested by the Iraqi government at the end of October and then agreed to two final changes to the text, said Shiite Muslim lawmaker Sami Askari, the confidant.

"He feels now, after these amendments, it is not a perfect agreement. We don't expect to have a perfect agreement. But he can now go to the people and politicians and say, 'Look, this is far better for Iraq to accept this, than going to the other options,' " Askari said in an interview. "It is not perfect . . . but it is better than the extension" from the U.N. Security Council.

A bilateral pact would replace the Security Council mandate authorizing the American military presence in Iraq, which expires at the end of the year. Under the mandate, the U.S. is responsible for Iraq's security.

The security agreement between the two countries, if approved, would give Iraq authority over all U.S. military operations in Iraq and would call for American troops to leave Iraqi cities by the summer of 2009 and the country at the end of 2011. It also would define how the two countries would handle cases in which U.S. military personnel are accused of crimes in Iraq.

Until this month, Maliki had declined to back the agreement to other Iraqi officials, according to Askari. But the prime minister told Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Vice Presidents Adel Abdel Mehdi and Tariq Hashimi that he supported the agreement with the United States in a meeting after the Americans had accepted most of the last changes suggested by the Iraqi Cabinet, Askari said.

"He played carefully and cleverly. Until recently he did not say a clear yes. When he talked about this agreement's advantages and disadvantages . . . he never said, 'I'm 100% behind it,' " Askari said. "Until he had a meeting . . . of the executive council when he met Tariq [Hashimi], Talabani and Abdel Mehdi, he said for the first time directly, 'I'm supporting the agreement.' "

The prime minister's negotiating team and U.S. officials were meeting to review the final versions of the text so it could be presented to the Cabinet on Sunday and be put before the parliament on Monday, Askari said.

The agreement would then go through three readings in parliament before coming for a vote, which would take about a week.

The prime minister will also defend the agreement in a speech, Askari said. He added that although the Kurds and ruling Shiite coalition were backing the agreement, Hashimi, from the main Sunni parliament bloc, had still not endorsed the agreement.

Maliki has long been considered enigmatic at best about the agreement, which has been seen as the equivalent of political dynamite in Iraq. U.S. officials had original expected to reach a deal by the end of July.

Some senior Iraqi officials have said privately that the prime minister was trying to avoid a decision on the pact and even thought he could make do without American forces if need be, or could simply seek a short-term extension of the U.N. mandate from the Security Council. They believed he feared risking his future on an agreement that could lead his political opponents to accuse him of selling Iraq off to foreigners.

Shiite officials have signaled in the past that Maliki's ruling coalition was willing to accept the agreement, only to have Maliki reopen the negotiations and ask for further concessions from the United States.