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Iraq Repeats Insistence on Fixed Withdrawal Date
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The administration's stated optimism that the agreement will be signed before the U.N. mandate expires on Dec. 31 is based on two premises: that the Maliki government considers a U.N. extension more politically problematic than a bilateral agreement that is less than 100 percent of what it has asked for; and that Iraqi leaders do not want to begin the negotiating process all over again after Obama takes office.
Should both of those assumptions prove false, the process of drawing up a new U.N. resolution and voting in the Security Council would take about two weeks. Although Iraqi officials initially said they would ask for an altered U.N. mandate that incorporated their sovereignty concerns, they have more recently acknowledged that U.N. parameters authorizing non-peacekeeping combat forces are fairly narrow. Instead, the officials said, Maliki would emphasize that any U.N. extension be of limited duration.
Obama was careful during the campaign not to comment on the substance of the negotiations with Iraq or any specific issue, except to say he would give the military a new mission of withdrawing from Iraq within 16 months, at a rate of one or two combat brigades a month. Obama has said he would maintain a "residual force" of unspecified size in Iraq, available for "targeted counterterrorism missions" against al-Qaeda in Iraq and to protect U.S. diplomatic and civilian personnel.
U.S. troops would also continue training Iraqi security forces, Obama has said, provided the Maliki government was making progress on political reconciliation among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups.
Both Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. have noted Maliki's pledge to submit any agreement to the Iraqi parliament and have said it was "unacceptable" for the White House not to seek a similar review from the U.S. Congress. They have also stated that any agreement must make "absolutely clear that the U.S. will not maintain permanent bases in Iraq."
DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondents Zaid Sabah and Qais Mizher in Baghdad contributed to this report.
