IRAQI PRIME Minister Nuri al-Maliki will not sign the agreement governing the presence of US forces in Iraq unless further amendments are made to the text, writes Michael Jansen
However, Washington has been pressing Iraq hard to accept the text finalised by the US and Iraqi teams early last week. Fearing widespread popular opposition and divisions in parliament, Mr Maliki's aide, Shaikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, said: "For this matter we need national consensus."
He also observed that it might be better to wait until a successor takes over from the outgoing Bush administration. Mr Saghir revealed that Iraq's leaders are considering an extension of the UN Security Council mandate. This option became a possibility once Russia, one of five permanent council members, declared its intention of voting in favour of an extension for six months or a year.
Dropping the text negotiated over the past seven months would amount to a serious setback to the Bush administration which has been trying to underpin the US deployment in Iraq with an agreement which permits US forces to remain in the country until the end of 2011 and provides protection for US troops on operations outside their bases. Although the Iraqis gained major concessions, the Shia-dominated government, facing provincial and parliamentary elections next year, fears a backlash if it accepts the terms of the current version of the pact.
Shortly after the text was presented to the government, Ali al-Adeeb, chief of staff in Mr Maliki's Dawa party, declared that the Iraqi parliament "cannot approve this pact in its current form". His statement followed the ruling or fatwa of Dawa's spiritual mentor, Lebanon's Shia Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, who warned Iraqis not to accept the deal. Ayatollah Khazim Haeri, the Iran-based mentor of dissident cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the masses of Shia poor, also issued a fatwa against the pact, calling it "haram" or forbidden in Islam.
Senior US military officers have warned that rejection of the agreement could have serious consequences. All US operations would have to be halted and forces would be confined to bases.
Meanwhile, the main Sunni parliamentary faction, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has suspended "all official contacts" with US military and civilian officials after US and Iraqi forces, allegedly, killed a senior member of the party and arrested others near Faluja in Anbar province. The party said the dead man was shot in his bed and five others were detained.