With a year-end deadline for the pullout of US troops looming, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Tuesday said he believes there will be an agreement with the US to train his country’s military and talks are already under way in Baghdad.
“We’re looking for October for these talks to move forward,” Zebari said in an interview.
The administration of US President Barack Obama is considering 3,000 to 5,000 troops for an Iraqi training mission, according to Washington officials familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
One Iraqi lawmaker close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Baghdad may ask only for about 2,500 forces.
“I think we will get an agreement on training,” Zebari said, but he would not discuss numbers and stressed that training could take place both outside and inside Iraq.
“How many trainers will remain in Iraq is not that important,” he said. “It’s the commitment that is very important.”
Regardless, Zebari said, there will be no new status of forces or security agreement with the US.
“The political conditions in Iraq have changed. That’s why it’s difficult,” he said.
Any move that leaves US forces in the country past the end of the year has been vigorously opposed by anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia was responsible for much of the violence in the country when it was consumed in a near civil war in 2005 and 2006. Al-Sadr has threatened a resumption of violence if the US troops remain into next year.
“We reject even the staying of trainers,” Sadrist lawmaker Mushraq Naji said last week. “Our stance is clear and that all US troops should leave. Negotiations to keep them here run against the will of the Iraqi people.”
Zebari said the government has support from most political leaders for the talks with the Americans on training mission arrangements because the country doesn’t have the military expertise to protect its shores and oil terminals, control its airspace and air defenses, “and even the land forces need” training.
However, he said the government must line up support in parliament for the training mission.
Zebari was interviewed hours after officials in Baghdad announced that Iraq had signed an estimated US$3 billion deal to buy 18 fighter jets from the US. The F-16s aren’t expected to arrive in Iraq until next fall at the earliest, and more likely not until 2013, which means US forces could still be asked to patrol the country’s skies.
Zebari said the importance of the deal is “for the world to know that Iraq is an ally of the United States in the region.”
Asked about protecting Iraq’s airspace before the planes arrive and Iraqi pilots are trained, Zebari said the no-fly zone in northern Iraq in 1991 and 1992 was controlled by just six US officers.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
RSS