SOFA UPDATE….The Iraqi parliament has postponed its vote on a security agreement with the United States. The holdup comes, unsurprisingly, from the Sunni bloc:
Rashid Azzawi, a parliament member with the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the Tawafiq parties, said members of the bloc would boycott today’s session if they did not receive promises that their demands would be met.
“The most important demand is the political process reform. We have demanded the Iraqi government not allow any side to monopolize decision-making,” he said, reflecting Sunni fear of being marginalized in the parliament by the majority Shiites and the Kurds.
Azzawi also said Sunni lawmakers wanted amnesty for detainees in U.S. custody, who number about 16,000 and are overwhelmingly Sunni. In addition, he said, Tawafiq wanted a national referendum on the pact, even if the parliament passed it. If the public voted against the pact, he said, the Iraqi government would be obliged to cancel it.
I have a hard time seeing Maliki accede to a referendum on the agreement, but the amnesty and political reform demands can probably be fudged enough to get the Sunnis on board. Alternately, Maliki could just decide to go ahead without their votes and pass the agreement solely with votes from the Kurdish bloc and his own Shiite bloc. Juan Cole has more.
