By NNN-KUNA,
London : American soldiers will withdraw from cities across Iraq next summer and all US combat troops will leave the country within three years, provided the violence remains low, under the terms of a draft agreement with the Iraqi government, it was reported here.
In one of the most detailed insights yet into the content of the deal, Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, told The Times newspaper that the US military would be barred from unilaterally mounting attacks inside Iraq from next year.
In addition, the power of arrest for US soldiers would be curbed by the need to hand over any detainee to a new, US-Iraq committee. Troops would require the green light from their joint command before conducting any operation.
The Pentagon refused to comment on the proposals laid out in the draft agreement between Baghdad and Washington that covers the status of US forces beyond 2008.
Britain will strike its own deal with Iraq, but Prime Minister Gordon Brown hopes to withdraw most US troops from Iraq by next summer, reducing the number of soldiers from 4,100 to “a few hundred” by then, according to the paper Thursday.
Zebari said in an interview: “Our negotiators and the Americans have almost brought the accord to a close. It is not a closed deal but it is very close.”
After five months of sometimes heated debate, the technical part of the job, drawing up a legally sound document that contains various compromises and is written in the right language, is over.
Next, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, and other Iraqi leaders must give their approval, something that could happen this month, although Talabani is in the US recovering from a knee operation.
The so-called strategic framework, which includes a temporary status-of-forces agreement (sofa), would then be put before parliament, which returns from a summer break in early September.
Asked if the deal was acceptable to Iraq, Zebari replied: “I think we can defend it, yes. I would say that it is the most advanced version of a sofa ever that the United States has done with any other country … because of the areas of compromises, of concessions, of understanding.
“This is not a re-colonisation as some of our critics say, or another Anglo-Iraqi treaty of the 1930s that will bind Iraq.
“The terms of the deal can be reviewed within one or two years, subject to the approval of both sides, which ensures that the next US Administration will not be bound by the conditions.”
Zebari said that the agreement also made no provision for permanent US military bases in the country, a point of contention for the Iraqi public. The US has scores of sprawling military camps up and down Iraq.
Both sides “have managed to make some compromises on all the sticky issues or problematic areas of any sofa, which are universal, jurisdiction; detention; powers of authorisation to launch military operations; issues of sovereignty,” the foreign minister, speaking in his office in Baghdad, said.
The “time horizon” for the exit of US troops would depend upon the ability of the Iraqi police and army to maintain security gains in Iraq after a surge of US forces in 2007 helped to push violence to its lowest levels in four-and-a-half years.
“We are talking about combat troops, maybe in 2010-11, there could be drawdowns,” Zebari said, confirming that this was referred to in the draft accord.
The strategic framework provides a legal basis for US forces in Iraq after a UN mandate expires at the end of the year, another contentious notion for the many Iraqis who oppose the continuing presence of foreign troops.
US President George W. Bush has long resisted setting a firm timetable to pull out the remaining 145,000 US servicemen and women in Iraq but the White House has begun referring to a general “time horizon” and “aspirational goals” in recent weeks, The Times added.