BAGHDAD – Declaring that there will not be “another colonization of Iraq,” the country's foreign minister raised the possibility yesterday that a full security agreement with the United States might not be reached this year, and that if one was, it would be short-term.
U.S. officials, speaking anonymously because of the delicate state of negotiations, said they were no longer optimistic that a complete security agreement could be reached by the end of the year, when a United Nations mandate expires.
At a news conference in Baghdad, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters that some headway had been made, but that negotiators were at loggerheads over issues such as the extent of Iraqi control over U.S. military operations and the right of U.S. soldiers to detain suspects without the approval of Iraqi authorities.
Negotiations are being complicated by political currents in both countries. Iraqi politicians, facing elections scheduled for the fall, do not want to be seen as capitulating to the United States. At the same time, they are eager for some form of agreement to prevent the rapid departure of U.S. forces.
In the United States, President Bush has been pushing hard for a deal to be completed by July 31.
But congressional Democrats are reluctant to sign off on an agreement before the presidential elections, while Republicans are divided.
As a result, Iraqi politicians say, the likelihood is that the two sides will agree to an interim pact that will extend the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq in some mutually acceptable form for a limited amount of time.
The security agreement, sometimes referred to as a “status of forces” agreement, is needed to replace a U.N. mandate that serves as the legal basis of the U.S. troop presence and expires Dec. 31.
“There is controversy here in Iraq,” Zebari said. “We have an election here; they have an election there. It's a political matter.”
Noting that the United States cannot stay in Iraq without legal authorization, Zebari listed three options: “Either we conclude a status-of-forces agreement, or we have an interim agreement until a S.O.F.A. can be completed, or we go back to the Security Council at the end of the year and ask for another extension.”
He said an interim pact could take the form of a memorandum of understanding and related documents, which would be less extensive than a formal security agreement. They probably would be appended to the document that Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed last year that laid out the principles for the continuing relationship between the countries.
In the past, Iraqi policymakers have been emphatic about avoiding a further extension of the U.N. mandate, but some are reconsidering that position.
Under that resolution, Iraq is immune from liability lawsuits stemming from the era of Saddam Hussein that could run into the billions of dollars.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Iraq said she could not elaborate on the negotiations. “It's too many moving parts; positions are changing too rapidly,” Mirembe Nantongo said. “It's an ongoing negotiation. We know where we are in terms of Iraqi sovereignty. We don't want anything that will weaken or compromise Iraqi sovereignty.”
Zebari said that on his recent trip to the United States, in addition to Bush, he had met with the presumptive presidential nominees for both political parties, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill.
Zebari also indicated that even a full agreement would be short. “We are not talking about 50 years, 25 years or 10 years,” he said. “We are negotiating about one or two years, so this is not going to be another colonization of Iraq.”
At a practical level, changing the form of the agreement will not affect the U.S. presence in Iraq in the short term.
There appears to be no discussion of forcing U.S. troops to leave Iraq at the end of the year. It is more a matter of finding a form for an agreement that is acceptable to all sides, giving the U.S. military the practical authority it needs to function in combat while letting the Iraqis say they are not locked into a lengthy agreement.
Zebari's remarks were his most detailed public statements about the negotiations with the United States over the future status of U.S. forces in Iraq, now in its sixth year of a war that began when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Hussein.
On Tuesday, Zebari told Iraqi lawmakers in parliament that the Americans had conceded on one area of contention in the negotiations: the legal status of private security contractors in the country. He said the United States had agreed to lift immunity for them, so they would be subject to prosecution under Iraqi law.
The private security companies, such as Blackwater USA, have a reputation for using excessive force in protecting diplomatic and other foreign clients, and operate with immunity from Iraqi law. That status became a political issue last fall, after a Blackwater shooting in Baghdad left 17 Iraqis dead.
