BAGHDAD — The U.S. military has advised Iraqi authorities that it will have to shut down security and service operations in Iraq if the year ends without a security agreement or a renewed United Nations mandate for American forces, Iraqi officials said Monday.
Iraqi politicians are considering a draft agreement that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq through 2011 and give the Iraqis a greater role in security operations.
If parliament does not approve the deal before the U.N. mandate expires Dec. 31, there will be no legal basis for the U.S. to operate in Iraq.
But some key Shiite politicians say the agreement cannot win approval in its current form and have asked for unspecified changes.
Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said the U.S. had submitted papers identifying a number of activities that would stop at the end of the year in the absence of a legal framework. These include not only security operations but also infrastructure improvements and assistance to ministries.
“This is an obvious attempt at blackmail,” Othman said. “The aim of this kind of pressure on the Iraqi government is unacceptable. Such measures while the negotiations are still continuing might backfire.”
Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi told McClatchy Newspapers that the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, listed “tens” of areas that faced cutoff in a three-page letter al-Hashemi called “really shocking for us.”
Odierno’s spokesman, Lt. Col. James Hutton, said there was no letter but “we provided information as a part of our normal engagements with many in the government of Iraq.” He would not elaborate.
Meanwhile, the American military in recent months has begun freeing many of the Iraqi prisoners it’s been holding without charges and aims to release all of them by December 2009, according to U.S. military data and interviews with military officials.
In the 5 1/2 years since the Iraq war began, U.S. troops have arrested and detained roughly 100,000 Iraqis, almost all of them without formal criminal charges. A year ago, 26,000 Iraqis were in American military detention, more than at any other point since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. About 17,000 remain imprisoned, but that number is dropping fast.
Brig. Gen. David Quantock, the U.S. deputy commanding general in charge of detainee operations in Iraq, told McClatchy Newspapers that he thinks the vast majority of detainees who remain in custody aren’t dangerous. Most of them joined the insurgency because they were paid to do so or were threatened, he said.
