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Faced with Iraqi anger over a United States plan to enable Washington to keep military forces in the country indefinitely, President George W. Bush is offering concessions to the Government of Nouri Maliki in an effort to salvage an agreement, it emerged yesterday.
The proposed terms of the impending deal have had a predictably explosive political effect inside Iraq. Negotiations between Washington and Baghdad grew fraught, with Iraqi politicians denouncing US demands to maintain a permanent grip on the country through the establishment of permanent military bases.
Officials complained that the plan which allows US troops to occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, would turn Iraq into a colony of the US, and create the conditions for unending conflict both in Iraq and the Middle East.
With Washington's Iraqi allies rising up in revolt against the plans, Bush ordered a negotiating shift after speaking to Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister.
Senior Iraqi officials want a major reduction of the US military footprint in Iraq as soon as the UN Security Council mandate approving their presence expires at the end of the year. Iraqi officials also want US forces confined to barracks unless the Iraqis ask for their assistance. Many officials want the US troops to leave altogether.
Bush, who is on a farewell tour of Europe, wants a new agreement sealed by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory in Iraq and say his 2003 invasion has been vindicated before he leaves office.
But any long-term settlement to maintain US forces in Iraq would cut the ground from under the Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, who has promised to withdraw US troops if he is elected in November.
The Bush Administration says a new agreement is needed to ensure stability in Iraq, as without one or an extended UN mandate, there would be no legal basis for US forces to remain.
The growing Iraqi anger with the proposal was front-page news in the US yesterday. Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician close to Maliki told the Washington Post: "The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonisation of Iraq ... If we can't reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, 'Goodbye, US troops. We don't need you here any more'."
The Democrat-controlled Congress is also uneasy about Bush's attempt to impose a colonial-style mandate on Iraq. Both Democrats and Republicans have questioned Bush's assertion that he does not require congressional approval for the proposed agreement.
The argument is focused on negotiations on a status of forces agreement defining the legal rights and responsibilities of US forces. As framed, it gives the US military free reign to operate in the country. There is also proposed "security framework" covering the relationship between the US and Iraq.
Momentum is also growing within the Maliki Administration for the US to leave altogether. Maliki was in Iran this week where the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told him not to sign up to any long-term security deals with Washington.
The agreement is being negotiated by David Satterfield, the US State Department's top adviser on Iraq, who still maintains it can be initialled by a July deadline which Bush set last year last year.
"It's doable," he told reporters in Baghdad.
At a news conference, Satterfield kept repeating that the US wants only to create a more independent Iraq. "We want to see Iraqi sovereignty strengthened, not weakened," he said.
- INDEPENDENT
