Pact realizes U.S. interests - Islamic party

November 20, 2008 - 12:24:18
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq:

Spokesman for the Islamic Party Saleem al-Juburi said on Thursday that the agreement of withdrawing troops from Iraq realizes U.S. interests.

“We asked for several amendments because the agreement realizes the U.S. interests,” al-Juburi said during the parliament’s session.

He called for holding a referendum on the security deal.

Today’s session witnessed heated argument between Speaker of the parliament Mahmoud al-Mashhadani and Sadrist lawmakers who protested the second reading of the deal.

The Iraqi cabinet endorsed the controversial pact, also known as the status-of-forces agreement (SOFA), by an overwhelming majority of 27 votes to 1.

The Iraqi and U.S. sides have been negotiating a long-term security deal during the past months. The pact should determine the legal framework for the U.S. presence in Iraq after the end of this year, when the international mandate granted by the UN Security Council to the U.S. army to intervene in Iraq is due to expire.
SH (P)

VP, Sadrists discuss security pact

November 20, 2008 - 06:26:41
ARBIL / Aswat al-Iraq:

Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on Thursday conferred on the Iraqi-U.S. security pact with a delegation from the Sadr movement, according to a presidential release.

“Al-Hashemi today received a delegation from the Sadr parliamentary bloc,” said the release that was received by Aswat al-Iraq.

“During the meeting, the two sides discussed the Iraqi-U.S. security pact,” it added.
“The two sides agreed to continue meetings and dialogue,” it noted.
MH (P)/SR  

U.S. lawmaker accuses Bush of secrecy over Iraq deal – report

November 20, 2008 - 06:17:20
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq:

The International Herald Tribune reported that the U.S. government is refusing to make public the security pact it has signed with Iraq, even though it has already been published in full in an Iraqi newspaper, a congressional hearing was told on Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were holding a closed briefing for U.S. House of Representatives members on the pact signed on Monday that sets a 2011 deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq.

According to the daily, Rep. Bill Delahunt, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations and Human Rights, before the closed briefing called it “insulting and an after-thought,” after the Bush administration earlier rebuffed calls for Congress to be consulted during year-long negotiations on the agreement.

The administration has said it will not seek congressional approval for the deal. It has been in a hurry to finalise the pact, which Iraqi lawmakers still must approve, before the UN mandate under which U.S. troops operate expires on December 31.

Delahunt, who has urged President George W. Bush to renew the UN mandate rather than sign a bilateral agreement with Iraq, held the eighth in a series of hearings on the Status of Forces Agreement.
He said the Bush administration had turned down an invitation to attend the open hearing, saying it was a “sensitive time.” Experts testifying before his subcommittee were forced to rely on an unofficial English translation of the security deal.

“Even now the National Security Council has requested that we do not show this document to our witnesses or release it to the public. Now that’s incredible — meantime the Iraqi government has posted this document on its media website,” Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, said.

He was referring to the Iraqi government-funded al-Sabah newspaper, whose Arabic version of the deal is also the source of the only known unofficial English translation, by the anti-war American Friends Service Committee.

“There is something bizarre about the text being disseminated to the Iraqi people and we are being told we cannot distribute the English-language version of the agreement,” said Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

According to the unofficial version, the newspaper said, the United States and Iraq are to set up a joint committee to oversee and coordinate all offensive U.S. military operations.

“All such military operations that are carried out pursuant to this agreement shall be conducted with the agreement of the government of Iraq. Such operations shall be fully coordinated with Iraqi authorities,” the translated document says.

Oona Hathaway, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said it appeared the agreement would give the joint committee operational control over U.S. military operations. If so, that would be “unprecedented and extremely unusual,” she said.

“The president can enter into agreements on his own but this agreement goes far beyond the president’s independent constitutional powers,” Hathaway said.

She said challenging the legality of the agreement was compounded by the vagueness of much of its wording. She said standard SOFAs are several hundred pages, but the Iraqi one was a little over 20 pages.

On the controversial issue of Iraqi criminal jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers, the unofficial English version says Iraq will have that right “when such crimes are committed outside agreed facilities and outside duty status.” It does not define “duty status.”

But any U.S. service members arrested or detained by Iraqi forces will be kept in U.S. custody pending trial, it says.

In the future, U.S. forces will not be able to arrest Iraqis without Iraqi approval, and those detained must be handed over to Iraqi authorities within 24 hours, requirements that could potentially complicate military operations, Michael Matheson, a former State Department legal adviser told the hearing.
MH (I)/SR  

U.S.-Iraq security pact may be in violation, Congress is told – report

November 20, 2008 - 06:16:10
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq:

The Boston Globe on Thursday reported that passage of the U.S.-Iraq security pact under the terms both countries’ leaders have advocated could violate the constitutions of both countries, specialists told a congressional subcommittee yesterday.

Instead they pressed for an extension of the United Nations mandate authorizing U.S. troop involvement in Iraq, which expires on Dec. 31.

According to the daily, American constitutional law scholar Oona Hathaway said she believes the Constitution requires Congress to also approve the agreement. The Bush administration has labeled the pact a “status of forces agreement,” which can be implemented without congressional approval.
But Hathaway said the US-Iraqi pact is more comprehensive than previous agreements because it allows U.S. troops to engage in military operations and specifies timetables for military withdrawal.
“These are unprecedented in a standard status of forces agreement, have never been part of a standard status of forces agreement, and extend in my view far beyond what the president can do without obtaining congressional approval,” said Hathaway, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law.

She also dismissed contentions that the administration can continue combat operations in Iraq after Dec. 31 based on the congressional resolution that authorized the 2003 U.S. invasion.

“This was enacted, remember, in 2002, when Saddam Hussein was in power, and we were hearing about weapons of mass destruction, and so it was clear what the threat posed by Iraq was,” she said. “It was posed by the government of Iraq. Of course, that government has changed, and those same threats to the United States do not exist.”

The hearing was held by the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on international organizations, human rights, and oversight.

Its chairman, Representative William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that he has “serious reservations” about the pact and argued that an extension of the UN mandate would be a viable stopgap measure.

The security agreement, which the Iraqi Cabinet approved on Sunday and the United States and Iraq signed on Monday, requires U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Iraq’s Parliament must approve the agreement before it takes effect.

Iraqi lawmakers, however, are debating the number of votes needed to pass the agreement. Most of the ruling parties argue that current law requires only a simple majority, while opponents say a provision in the Iraqi constitution calls for a two-thirds majority of the 275-member Parliament, said Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi architect who is a consultant to the American Friends Service Committee.

Opponents of the pact introduced a bill Monday that would set a two-thirds standard for approval of agreements like the security pact.

“No one has ever proposed to have a simple majority for this type of agreement,” Jarrar said. “Many people think that the new argument of just requiring a simple majority is politically motivated.”

Yesterday, opponents of the agreement, including followers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, disrupted a second reading of the agreement in parliament.

Jarrar told the House subcommittee a simple-majority approval of the pact could provoke unrest and violence in Iraq.

“Most of the groups who are opposing it in the parliament, have been saying, ‘If you wanted to go through some loopholes - not send it to Parliament or pass it through a simple majority - we will quit this political process as a whole, and we will go back to armed resistance,’ ” he said.

Delahunt said U.S. and Iraqi officials should begin working on a six-month to one-year extension of the UN mandate instead of pushing the security agreement through the Iraqi parliament before it recesses next week.

The extension would allow President-elect Barack Obama and his administration to review and “improve the agreement to meet the campaign promises of Sen. Obama.” Obama has advocated a 16-month time frame for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Delahunt also berated the Bush administration for refusing to release an official copy of the agreement to the public.

MH (R)/SR