U.S. threatens pullout in push for security pact
By Roy Gutman and Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers
Monday, Oct 27, 2008
BAGHDAD | The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn’t agree to a new deal on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.
Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Newspapers on Sunday.
In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas — “everything” — said Tariq al-Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. “I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services.”
Al-Hashimi said Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed “tens” of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter.
“It was really shocking for us,” he said. “Many people are looking to this attitude as a matter of blackmailing.”
Odierno had no comment Sunday, but U.S. Embassy officials told McClatchy that a lengthy list has been passed on to the Iraqi government.
Fearing a major battle over the security pact in the Iraqi Parliament, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki solicited proposed amendments from his Cabinet and called a meeting to review them Sunday.
However, the two main Shiite parties, al-Maliki’s Dawa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, were unable to produce their full lists of demands, and he postponed the meeting until Tuesday, other Cabinet members said.
Al-Hashimi said that Iran, a longtime backer of both parties, is pressuring Iraq’s leaders not to accept the agreement.
The dispute "is real and factual. The government is not manipulating this dispute," al-Hashimi said. He said he hadn't yet seen the objections to the accord, even those from his own Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party.
Political party heads, including al-Hashimi, say that al-Maliki is responsible for the agreement, but al-Maliki has been unwilling to back the accord unless his Shiite coalition and other party members join him to take the political heat.
An additional complication is the decision of al-Hashimi's Iraqi Islamic party to suspend all "official communication" with U.S. military and civilian officials until it receives an explanation and an apology after a joint U.S.-Iraqi military raid against party backers in Al Anbar province in which one man was killed.
It's unclear what will happen when the Iraqi cabinet offers a list of proposed changes and al-Maliki winnows them down to proposed amendments.
U.S. threatens pullout in push for security pact
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