[Peace-discuss] On the Iraq-US SOFA agreement

[Robert Naiman]

In the NYT:

Explosions in Iraqi Political Office Kill at Least 5
Timothy Williams and Abeer Mohammed, New York Times, July 31, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html
[...]
Thursday was also when Iraqis were supposed to vote on the
Iraqi-American security agreement, including the timing of the
departure of United States troops. When the Iraqi Parliament approved
the security plan last year, one of the terms was that a national
referendum be held by July 30, 2009.

The referendum plan had been a way to appease Iraqi political groups
wary of approving an agreement that allowed American troops to remain
in Iraq until 2012.

But with the phased withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, including
the departure of combat forces from cities last month, much of the
suspicion among the Iraqi public that the Americans sought to stay
indefinitely has been cast away, lessening the urgency for a
referendum on the issue, Iraqi lawmakers said Thursday.

Had a national referendum failed, American forces would have had to
leave Iraq entirely within one year of the vote.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has proposed
scheduling the referendum for Jan. 15 to coincide with parliamentary
elections.

On Thursday, one of the few public mentions of the July 30 deadline
was made by Tariq al-Hashemi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents. "This
date had been carefully chosen to provide the necessary time to have a
tangible result," Hashemi said in a statement. "Failure to meet the
date is a delay that denies the Iraqi people their rights."

In the meantime, various Iraqi governmental entities pointed fingers
at one another for failing to convene an election.

Some members of Parliament blamed the Maliki government for the delay
of the vote, saying it wanted to avoid an embarrassing election
defeat; the head of Iraq's elections commission blamed Parliament for
failing to approve an election law; and an adviser to Maliki blamed
the elections commission and Parliament.

"It is an issue between Parliament and the Independent High Electoral
Commission," said Ali al-Mousawi, Maliki's media adviser. "The
government submitted a suggestion to Parliament to hold the election
on the same date as the parliamentary election. So why didn't
Parliament refuse that suggestion and hold it on July 30? The
government only carries out what the Parliament asks it to."
[...]


On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 4:27 PM, Paul Mueth<paulmueth at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 7/31/09, Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> From: Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
>> Subject: [Peace-discuss] On the Iraq-US SOFA agreement
>> To: "Peace-discuss Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> Date: Friday, July 31, 2009, 2:39 PM
>
>> …We've sat on our
>> sofas while a so-called SOFA
>
> which called for a general referendum by the Iraqi people as to whether they wanted the sofa ,,  it's been postponed for six months from its "sometime in june" date, by request of obama gov't in an act of administrative fiat by malikI suppose they already figureing a way to finess it at that time. . . . tho the compliant media here probably will ignore it then as now. .
>
>
> cheers,
>
> malgre tout
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>



-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org