SECURITY AGREEMENT UPDATE….Negotiations to put in place a long-term security agreement with Iraq aren’t going well:
Key members of the Iraqi parliament’s largest political bloc have called for all American troops to leave this country in 2011 as a condition for allowing the U.S. military to stay here beyond year’s end, officials said Sunday.
The change sought by the influential United Iraqi Alliance would harden the withdrawal date for U.S. troops….The Shiite bloc, which includes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party, also insists that Iraqi officials have a bigger role in determining whether U.S. soldiers accused of wrongdoing are subject to prosecution in Iraqi courts, said Sami al-Askeri, a political adviser to Maliki.
….It was not immediately clear whether the U.S. side would accept the changes to the draft agreement. The document would provide legal authority for American troops to remain in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires Dec. 31. If there is no accord or other legal cover for U.S. forces, they must leave.
The Bush administration has long resisted setting firm dates for the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying that the decision should be based on security conditions. U.S. authorities ultimately accepted a compromise, which set the 2011 withdrawal date but provided for an extension if Iraq requested one.
Normally, I’d say that this is probably yet another sign of hard bargaining, and in the end an agreement will almost certainly be signed. And that still seems the most likely course to me. On the other hand, the U.S. occupation is unpopular with the Iraqi public, and with elections coming up soon no politician in the country can afford to be seen as soft on the Americans. That’s democracy for you. Could be interesting times ahead.
