October 10, 2011
Iraq insistent on US forces non-immunity
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has reiterated his country's opposition to granting immunity to any US troops remaining in Iraq beyond an agreed year-end deadline.
"We are heading toward securing (US) trainers and experts for the American weapons we purchased, but without immunity," Maliki told Reuters during an interview in the capital, Baghdad, on Sunday.
He stated that the Americans had proposed that 3,400 troops stay in Iraq, but “we do not need such as large number.”
Washington has insisted on non-prosecution of the forces remaining in the country, which has lost over one million Iraqis to the 2003 US-led invasion and the subsequent occupation, which has dragged on to date.
Maliki said the forces could rather join up with the existing US embassy staff or a training mission serving the Western military alliance of NATO.
The US embassy has a few military trainers attached to its Office for Security Cooperation in Baghdad. NATO has 160 Iraq-based staff, who are slated to leave by the end of 2013.
Iraqi leaders first withheld the immunity at a Tuesday meeting, during which they agreed to the extended deployment of some of the troops.
The meeting saw Sadrists -- the political coalition loyal to the senior Iraqi cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr -- raising serious objection to the very presence of foreign forces on the country's soil even without immunity.
“From the first meeting as a Sadrist Trend we showed our absolute rejection to keeping of the forces whether it is as trainers or others, whether it is with immunity or without immunity, and this rejection is fixed forever,'' said Bahaa al-Aaraji, a Sadrist lawmaker.
There are about 43,500 American troops currently deployed in Iraq. Under a 2008-clinched bilateral security accord, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), all the troops are required to leave the country by the end of this year.
Earlier in the year, however, the White House started mounting pressure on the country to extend the presence, with the former US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, facing Baghdad with one such plea.
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