Iraqi premier backs accord

It’s not perfect, but it’s better than other options, an official said.

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — After months of tough negotiations and multiple revisions, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has decided to back the controversial U.S.-Iraq security agreement that calls for the complete withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Friday.

Al-Maliki informed President George W. Bush in the past 24 hours that he’s “satisfied” with what Iraqi officials now are calling the “withdrawal agreement,” a Bush administration official said in Washington. Earlier, al-Maliki informed the Iraqi Presidency Council that he’d back it, Sami al-Askari, a Shiite Muslim legislator who’s close to the premier, said Friday.

At al-Maliki’s meeting with the Presidency Council last week, President Jalal Talabani and Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul Mehdi responded that they and their political blocs also supported the draft, but the Sunni Muslim vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, declined to give his endorsement, Askari said.

Al-Askari said al-Maliki, who had won two last-minute concessions from the Bush administration, plans to address the nation to seek public support for the accord. He’ll present it to the Cabinet on Sunday and, if it’s approved, it will go to the parliament, which will vote for or against it. The Bush administration is briefing Congress on the accord but won’t submit it for a vote. Without Sunni backing, the agreement could die before it goes to parliament, however.

Al-Maliki’s endorsement amounts to an about-face, for he was a hard-line holdout throughout the negotiations and had publicly criticized the agreement over the summer. The negotiations have been a political minefield for him, and he has stepped through it carefully.

The agreement, which is due to take effect Jan. 1, would replace a United Nations mandate that allows U.S. forces to operate in Iraq and would severely limit their activities.

According to al-Askari, the United States agreed to two more amendments to the draft after returning what Washington called the final text. He said the negotiating teams were working through the night Friday to synchronize the Arabic and English texts.

“We can’t get any more,” al-Askari said. “In practice, the Americans, they can’t do anything alone, according to this agreement. ... He [al-Maliki] feels now after all these amendments it’s not a perfect agreement but he can now go to the people and politicians and say, ‘Look, it is far better to accept this than the other options.’”

But in Washington, the administration official, who refused to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, said he wasn’t aware of any additional changes to the accord and that there had been “no fine tuning at all.”

Washington and al-Maliki are hoping that the Iraqi parliament will approve the pact by Nov. 24, when it’s scheduled to adjourn.

Al-Askari said the United States didn’t give in to Iraqi demands for the power to prosecute American troops but that al-Maliki decided this was the best deal Iraq could get.