The Bush administration has launched a top-level lobbying campaign to persuade skeptical US lawmakers and disapproving Iraqi politicians to support a security agreement governing the continued presence of US troops in Iraq.
Although congressional approval is not legally required, US lawmakers’ support is considered crucial for an agreement to go forward. In Iraq, where the deal must pass through several complex layers of approval, the going is considered even tougher.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, are reaching out to key members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Rice also is pressing senior Iraqi leaders to accept the deal.
The agreement includes a timeline for US withdrawal by 2012 and a crucial but unpopular and potentially controversial compromise that gives Iraq limited ability to try US contractors or soldiers for major crimes committed off-duty and off-base, officials said on Thursday.
Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama and Republican rival Senator John McCain, both on Senate committees that deal with the issue, were among those being briefed on the proposal by Rice. Officials could not say on Thursday if she had talked to them yet.
Neither candidate has signaled a position on the draft in campaign appearances. In their debate on Wednesday, McCain made only a fleeting reference to it: “We’re now about to have an agreement for status of forces in Iraq coming up,” he said, without further comment.
Obama spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Obama and his running mate, Senator Joe Biden, “had productive conversations” with Rice.
“They look forward to reviewing the text of the draft agreement,” she said.
Obama, in a statement he and other senators released during the summer after a trip to Iraq, said they had discussed with Iraqi leaders “the need to give our troops immunity from Iraqi prosecution so long as they are in Iraq.”
Rice on Wednesday called senior Iraqi leaders, pressing them to accept the agreement that contains elements that many in Baghdad see as a violation of their country’s sovereignty, officials said.
“The Iraqis are considering the text, we are talking to the Iraqis,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
He said Rice had spoken to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite like al-Maliki and a top member of the Supreme Council. Rice is working to keep the process moving, he said.
The administration had hoped to conclude the agreement by the end of July, to leave plenty of time to sell it before the current UN mandate for the US-led international force in Iraq expires on Dec. 31. Now it has less than three months to go before that legal cover for US forces disappears.
The UN mandate could be extended, but that could be a difficult process, and is a route neither the Iraqis nor the US relish pursuing.
Without either a deal or an extension, the worst-case scenario is that US troops in Iraq would have to be confined to their barracks.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS