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.
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