Iraq, US troop deal drifts over immunity
IRAQ: Just weeks before U.S. troops plan to leave Iraq, the
country’s political elite and Washington are at odds over whether
American soldiers stay as trainers: Baghdad rejects any legal immunity
for U.S. soldiers and Washington says that means no deal.
Without a shift in Iraq’s position, any accord will likely now fall
somewhere in between as Iraq’s political stalemate, U.S. domestic
opposition to the war and a lack of time force a deal that leaves a just
few hundred American soldiers in Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki last week said U.S. troops could
stay on as part of the small NATO mission or as part of an already
existing U.S. embassy military training programme which would give
American troops legal protections. The country’s political leadership
gave Maliki the green light to negotiate, but without immunity — a
sensitive matter that would have required tricky horse-trading within
his fragile cross-sectarian government and possible defeat in
parliament.
But Washington sounds skittish on the options, insisting U.S. troops
would need full protections or at least assurances that whatever Iraq
offers would bring the same legal cover.
“I can’t see the United States agreeing to blanket Iraqi
jurisdiction,” said Stephen Biddle at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“If it is more than just brinkmanship and if they are going to insist on
this, then I think the United States will decline to stay at all.”
More than eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam
Hussein, around 41,000 troops are in Iraq mostly advising Iraqi forces
since ending combat operations last year.
While violence has fallen since the sectarian slaughter in 2006-2007,
Iraq still suffers daily attacks from a stubborn insurgency allied with
al Qaeda and from Shi’ite militia.
In private some Iraqi leaders acknowledge they would like a U.S.
troop presence as a guarantee in a country where sectarian tensions
still simmer and Iraqi Arabs and Kurds are in dispute over who controls
oil-rich areas in the north of Iraq.
Only anti-U.S. Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr openly opposes a
continued U.S. presence.
Reuters
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