Iraq's PM wants timetable for US withdrawal

Iraq’s prime minister says his country wants some form of timetable for a withdrawal of American troops included in the deal the two countries are negotiating.

It was the first time that Nouri Maliki explicitly and publicly called for a withdrawal timetable – an idea opposed by US president George Bush.

He offered no details, but his national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, said the government was proposing a timetable based on the ability of Iraqi forces to provide security.

The White House said it did not believe Mr Maliki was proposing a rigid timeline for US troop withdrawals.

“Any agreement would not have any hard timetables for withdrawal, but could include the desire by the US and Iraq to withdraw troops based on conditions on the ground,” US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

“I know that prime minister Maliki has said that he doesn’t want a precipitous withdrawal because of the security consequences.”

Mr Maliki said in a meeting with Arab diplomats in Abu Dhabi that his country had also proposed a short-term interim memorandum of agreement rather than the more formal status of forces agreement the two sides have been negotiating.

The memorandum “now on the table” included a formula for the withdrawal of US troops, he said. “The goal is to end the presence (of foreign troops),” Mr Maliki said.

Some type of agreement is needed to keep US troops in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year. Many Iraqi MPs had criticised the government’s attempt to negotiate a formal status of forces agreement, worried that US demands would threaten the country’s sovereignty.

The contentious issues have been US authority to carry out military operations in Iraq and arrest the country’s citizens, along with legal immunity for private contractors and control of Iraqi airspace.

Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said last week after a visit to Washington that the US had agreed to drop immunity for private contractors and give up control of Iraqi airspace if Iraq guaranteed it could protect the country’s skies.

But those concessions, never confirmed by the US side, were apparently not enough to cement a formal agreement, leading Iraq instead to pursue the memorandum.

Iraq’s government has felt increasingly confident in recent weeks about its authority and the country’s improved stability.

Violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level in four years. The change has been driven by the 2007 build-up of American forces, the Sunni tribal revolt against al Qaida in Iraq and crackdowns against Shiite militias and Sunni extremists.