Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki has attacked critics of a pact giving US troops three years to leave Iraq by saying they wanted the Americans to stay so they could agitate against them.
Iraq and the United States signed the agreement on Monday, but it must first pass in the Iraqi parliament to take effect.
The pact requires US troops to leave in 2011, a timetable Washington accepted only after months of negotiations.
"Truly, they [critics] want these foreign forces to stay in Iraq because their presence on Iraqi soil has become for them, consciously or unconsciously, a political manoeuvre," Mr Maliki said in a speech on state television.
The speech was Mr Maliki's first comment on the security pact for weeks. He had remained silent during the final period of negotiations, leaving his own position a mystery until the cabinet approved the pact on Sunday.
The government believes it is likely to pass in parliament next week.
The main political groups in Mr Maliki's ruling coalition have lined up behind it, but followers of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr oppose it and Sunni Arab groups have reservations.
"In the past, some political factions carried banners demanding we schedule the withdrawal of foreign forces," Mr Maliki said in an apparent reference to the Sadrists.
"Regretfully, these same political factions turned away from the nation's demand to achieve this withdrawal . . . which has become a reality in the content of the pact," he said.
Mr Maliki said the cabinet had reservations about the pact, but saw it as the best way to return Iraq's sovereignty. "If we don't sign . . . Iraq's future will be uncertain."
The prime minister added that the process of concluding the pact had been transparent and that it contained no secret clauses.
Reuters