Iraq’s national security adviser on Sunday rejected a report that Washington and Baghdad have abandoned efforts to conclude a deal on the status of US troops in Iraq before the end of the presidency of George W. Bush.
Muwaffaq al-Rubaie said a front-page Washington Post story on Sunday was “missing the point” on the protracted negotiations and that the two sides were still aiming to achieve a pact by the end of the month as the US and Iraq had publicly hoped.
The Post reported that in place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had aimed to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a “bridge” document that would allow basic US military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a UN mandate at the end of the year, the report said.
“I don’t think this is true, to be quite honest,” Rubaie told CNN.
“Over the last few months or weeks ... we were trying to secure what is the best approach ... and I think we are very clear now what we want to do,” Rubaie said.
“We are trying very hard to get to this [July] timeline, and I believe that there is still hope,” he said, adding that the two sides were “making some good progress.”
The failure of months of negotiations is being blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept US terms and the complexity of the task, the daily noted.
Although Bush has repeatedly rejected calls for a troop withdrawal timeline, “we are talking about dates,” acknowledged one US official close to the negotiations, the Post said.
Iraqi political leaders “are all telling us the same thing. ... Iraqis want to know that foreign troops are not going to be here forever,” the official was quoted as saying.
Unlike the status-of-forces agreements with South Korea and Japan, where large numbers of US troops have been based for decades, the document now under discussion with Iraq is likely to cover only 2009, the report said.
Negotiators expect it to include a “time horizon,” with specific goals for US troop withdrawal from Baghdad and other cities, the Post said.
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