US Defence Secretary Robert Gates supports a draft deal with Iraq that would provide a new legal basis to keep American forces there after a UN mandate expires on December 31st, the Pentagon has said. After months of talks, US and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday they had reached agreement on a pact that would require US forces to withdraw from Iraq by 2011.
"He is comfortable with the document," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, noting that Mr Gates began calling members of Congress yesterday in support of the deal.
The Bush administration has long opposed a timetable for US withdrawals from Iraq and Mr Morrell insisted that the targets in the deal would be met only if conditions permitted.
"These are not ad hoc, willy-nilly, arbitrary timelines," he said. "These are goals that . . . will only be followed if the conditions on the ground provide for it."
"I don't think the secretary would be making phone calls in support of the document if he didn't believe it adequately protected our forces in Iraq in really all facets of their operations there, from combat to legal protections," Mr Morrell said.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, his two deputies, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President of the Kurdish region Massoud Barzani met yesterday in Baghdad to discuss the details of the agreement before it is submitted to the political council of national security, according to Mr Talabani's office.
The Bush administration doesn't plan to submit the agreement for a formal vote in Congress. It will be submitted to the Iraqi parliament for approval, after first being reviewed by the Council of Ministers, Mr Morrell added.
He declined to discuss the draft agreement in detail and stressed that it was not a final document.
One major sticking point in the negotiations was whether US troops could be prosecuted under Iraqi law.
Iraq said on Wednesday it had secured the right to prosecute US troops in certain circumstances. But the agreement appears to contain many caveats that mean US forces would be subject to Iraqi justice only in very rare cases.
An Iraqi government spokesman said Baghdad could prosecute US troops if they committed a crime while off duty and outside U.S. bases - and if a joint US-Iraqi committee agreed.
US troops are not allowed to leave bases in Iraq while off duty and doing so would be highly dangerous in a war zone.
Agencies