BAGHDAD — Iraq’s foreign minister said Wednesday that concessions by both sides had advanced the prospects for a new security agreement needed for U.S. forces to remain in the country beyond the end of the year.
Seeking to dispel criticism that the agreement would infringe on Iraqi sovereignty, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the opposition was based on “misrepresentations, confusion and politicking.”
The agreement being negotiated would be in effect only one or two years and would not sanction any permanent U.S. bases, Zebari said at a news conference. “That’s why this is not, as it has been misrepresented, another colonization of Iraq binding Iraq to a colonial agreement like the British Anglo-Iraqi agreement of the 1930s,” he said.
Zebari indicated, without being specific, that progress had been made on several issues that have kept the two sides apart, including the existing immunity from prosecution for the U.S. military and private contractors and the internment of Iraqi citizens by U.S. forces.
He said the U.S. had dropped its demand for continued immunity for contractors. U.S. officials have said they are not willing to allow trials of U.S. service members in Iraqi courts. Iraqis are demanding control of all Iraqi detainees.
Zebari described those as examples of issues on which progress was being made but said they were still being negotiated.
Acknowledging, however, that differences on some points could delay the negotiations, he said the government had short-term strategies such as a memorandum of understanding to keep U.S. troops in the country under existing rules.
U.S. officials have made it clear that American forces would not remain in Iraq without some legal foundation, he said. The U.N. mandate for their presence expires at the end of this year.
Another option would be seeking an extension of the mandate, he said.
Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces in Misan province arrested three members of the provincial council and 18 guards of the governor as part of the campaign to restore government control in the provincial capital, Amarah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said.
Also arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of involvement with Shiite militias were the chairman of Amarah provincial council, Abd Jabar Waheed, and two council members, all members of the al-Sadr movement.
Two Iraqis were killed and 10 injured in by mortar attack in Baghdad’s Amil neighborhood.
An Iraqi policeman was killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad, police said.
