Agreement on U. S. troops in Iraq remains elusive
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi foreign minister said Tuesday it will require “bold political decisions” to resolve the major issue standing in the way of a deal allowing American troops to remain here next year — who would try U. S. troops accused of crimes.
Neighboring Iran stepped up pressure against the proposed agreement. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad told a visiting Iraqi official that Iraq had “a duty” to resist the Americans, and another Iranian leader warned of unspecified consequences throughout the region.
American and Iraqi negotiators have been working for months to hammer out an agreement governing the operations of U. S. forces in this country after the current U. N. mandate expires at the end of the year.
Iraqi officials said the draft calls for U. S. troops to leave the country by the end of 2011 unless the Baghdad government asks them to stay.
But legal immunity for U. S. soldiers under Iraqi law has emerged as the major obstacle, with neither side able to find language to satisfy the other.
The United States wants the exclusive right to prosecute soldiers accused of crimes. The Iraqis want some form of legal jurisdiction over American soldiers as an affirmation of national sovereignty.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the Americans had submitted new ideas and language that “could be acceptable or reasonable.” He gave no details and cautioned that the government had not accepted them.
“I don’t want to give you any false hope about where we are, but I think we are very close,” he told reporters at a news conference with U. S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.
Negroponte refused to discuss details of the talks, saying only that “both countries are pursuing this issue from the point of view of their own national self-interest.”
The deal is subject to approval by parliament. Iraqi officials fear opposition unless the agreement satisfies Iraqi nationalists and Shiite politicians with close links to Shiite-dominated Iran.
The Iranians hammered home their objections during talks in Tehran with Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmoud al- Mashhadandi, a Sunni.
“Today, the duty of the Iraqi government and nation is to resist the extravagance of the occupiers,” Iranian state television quoted Ahmadinejad as telling the Iraqi official.
The report also quoted Iran’s influential parliament speaker Ali Larijani as saying the proposed agreement would have many “unpleasant impacts” on Iraq and regional countries.
Shortly before the news conference, two bombs attached to cars exploded in the parking lot of the Foreign Ministry, injuring seven people, police said.
In the northern city of Mosul, a U. S. soldier was killed during a firefight Tuesday when American troops responded to a report that an al- Qaida member with a suicide vest was hiding in a building, the U. S. military said.
An Iraqi policeman and a militant were also killed in the clash, which ended when a U. S. aircraft destroyed the building.
The soldier’s death raised the U. S. toll to 4,180 since the war began in March 2003.
Also in Mosul, a suicide car bomber attacked a U. S. military patrol Tuesday, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding 10 others, police said.
Three American soldiers also were wounded in that attack, a U. S. military spokesman said.
