Lawmaker Accuses Bush of Secrecy Over Iraq Deal

Thursday 20 November 2008

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by: Ross Colvin, Reuters

The proposed security pact between Iraq and the US is facing opposition in both countries' legislatures. (Photo: Reuters)

Washington - The U.S. government is refusing to make public the security pact it has signed with Iraq, even though it has already been published in full in an Iraqi newspaper, a congressional hearing was told on Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were holding a closed briefing for U.S. House of Representatives members on the pact signed on Monday that sets a 2011 deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq.

Rep. Bill Delahunt, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations and Human Rights, before the closed briefing called it "insulting and an after-thought," after the Bush administration earlier rebuffed calls for Congress to be consulted during year-long negotiations on the agreement.

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Maya Schenwar | Experts: SOFA Faces Legal Uncertainty •

The administration has said it will not seek congressional approval for the deal. It has been in a hurry to finalize the pact, which Iraqi lawmakers still must approve, before the U.N. mandate under which U.S. troops operate expires on December 31.

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Iraqi Lawmakers Brawl Over Security Pact •

Delahunt, who has urged President George W. Bush to renew the U.N. mandate rather than sign a bilateral agreement with Iraq, held the eighth in a series of hearings on the Status of Forces Agreement.

He said the Bush administration had turned down an invitation to attend the open hearing, saying it was a "sensitive time." Experts testifying before his subcommittee were forced to rely on an unofficial English translation of the security deal.

"Even now the National Security Council has requested that we do not show this document to our witnesses or release it to the public. Now that's incredible -- meantime the Iraqi government has posted this document on its media website," Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, said.

He was referring to the Iraqi government-funded al-Sabah newspaper, whose Arabic version of the deal is also the source of the only known unofficial English translation, by the anti-war American Friends Service Committee.

"There is something bizarre about the text being disseminated to the Iraqi people and we are being told we cannot distribute the English-language version of the agreement," said

Joint Military Center

According to the unofficial version, the United States and Iraq are to set up a joint committee to oversee and coordinate all offensive U.S. military operations.

"All such military operations that are carried out pursuant to this agreement shall be conducted with the agreement of the government of Iraq. Such operations shall be fully coordinated with Iraqi authorities," the translated document says.

Oona Hathaway, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said it appeared the agreement would give the joint committee operational control over U.S. military operations. If so, that would be "unprecedented and extremely unusual," she said.

"The president can enter into agreements on his own but this agreement goes far beyond the president's independent constitutional powers," Hathaway said.

She said challenging the legality of the agreement was compounded by the vagueness of much of its wording. She said standard SOFAs are several hundred pages, but the Iraqi one was a little over 20 pages.

On the controversial issue of Iraqi criminal jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers, the unofficial English version says Iraq will have that right "when such crimes are committed outside agreed facilities and outside duty status." It does not define "duty status."

But any U.S. service members arrested or detained by Iraqi forces will be kept in U.S. custody pending trial, it says.

In the future, U.S. forces will not be able to arrest Iraqis without Iraqi approval, and those detained must be handed over to Iraqi authorities within 24 hours, requirements that could potentially complicate military operations, Michael Matheson, a former State Department legal adviseuantánamo look like the easy part.

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Iraqi Lawmakers Brawl Over Security Pact

Wednesday 19 November 2008

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by: Campbell Robertson, The New York Times

Baghdad - A session of Iraq's Parliament collapsed in chaos on Wednesday, as a discussion among lawmakers about a three-year security agreement with the Americans boiled over into shouting and physical confrontation.

The session was dedicated to a second public reading of the agreement, which governs the presence of American troops in Iraq through 2011 and which the Parliament is scheduled to vote on Monday. Even before the session began, legislators were apprehensive.

"There is much tension inside the Parliament," said Iman al-Asadi, a Shiite lawmaker, shortly before the session was scheduled to start. "We worry that they will fight each other inside the room."

Lawmakers who support the pact said they were worried in particular about the followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who make up a bloc of 32 legislators in the 275-member Parliament. While there are those in Parliament, like many Sunnis, who have objections to elements of the pact, the Sadrists reject any agreement with the Americans in principle.

In a departure from protocol, security guards were present in the room, both because of the tension and because several Iraqi government officials, including the ministers of foreign affairs and finance, were in attendance to answer questions about the agreement. Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign affairs minister, said the guards were unarmed.

As soon as the session began, politicians in opposition to the pact stood up in the hall and volubly argued that the ratification process was unconstitutional, because a law governing the passage of international agreements has not been approved. Supporters say such a law is unnecessary, because Parliament had already ratified numerous agreements without one.

For the next two hours, the Parliament speaker, Mahmoud Mashhadani, lashed out at the objecters and refused their demands to change the Parliament agenda. He then invited Hassan al-Sneid, a Shiite lawmaker, to begin the second public reading of the agreement, a matter of parliamentary procedure.

As Mr. Sneid began reading, witnesses said, Sadrists and other opponents of the agreement continued to trade shouts with lawmakers who supported it. Then, Ahmed Masu'udi, a Sadrist lawmaker, approached the dais. Mr. Masu'udi said later in an interview that he was simply trying to reach Mr. Mashhadani to persuade him to stop the reading; several other witnesses said Mr. Masu'udi tried to attack Mr. Sneid. The security guards rushed toward Mr. Masu'udi, who said that they grabbed him and struggled to push him away. At that point, witnesses said, the hall was filled with shouting, lawmakers rushed toward the front and the session ended in chaos.

Legislators poured out of the hall and into the cafeteria, an area of the Parliament building that is cordoned off by low walls but is in full view of the spacious, patriotically decorated lobby. There, shouting and accusations continued among the lawmakers, echoing in the building and quickly attracting a company of camouflage-wearing security guards, who surrounded the cafeteria and tried to keep away the journalists and other onlookers who had gathered.

The shouting ended shortly after when many of the legislators involved marched off to their offices. In the aftermath, members of Parliament, many visibly irritated, cast blame: on the Sadrists for causing the commotion, on the dominant Shiite parties for what they see as an attempt to jam the passage through too quickly, and on the Americans and the Iraqi government for what even some supporters of the pact consider an inappropriately secretive negotiating process.

There was uncertainty as to what would happen Thursday, when Parliament tries again for the second reading. Several blocs threatened to boycott Parliament until an investigation took place, while other lawmakers vowed that anyone who tried to disrupt the session would be forcibly removed. There was also uncertainty as to whether the agreement could be voted on before the middle of next week, when many legislators may go on a pilgrimage.

While the confrontation in Parliament was unfolding, demonstrations in favor of the pact were taking place around the country, as hundreds marched in the mainly Shiite cities of Basra and Hilla and even in the Sunni city of Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.

But the optimism among Shiite lawmakers earlier in the week had considerably dampened.

"What we wanted to avoid, we have fallen into," said Haider al-Abadi, a senior member of the prime minister's Dawa Party and a supporter of the pact, sitting in his office a little more than an hour after the skirmish. "Maybe it is good," he said, appearing exhausted. "It will force us to look back at how we discuss things in Parliament."

In Washington, the Bush administration sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on the agreement. They did so behind closed doors, and the administration has not released a copy of the agreement. Officials have repeatedly declined to discuss its terms in detail.

The administration argues that the agreement with Iraq does not require Congressional approval, but prominent lawmakers have raised objections, particularly about the provisions giving the Iraqis legal jurisdiction over crimes by American soldiers in some circumstances and about Iraq's demands to authorize military operations.

"I have a few problems with the agreement, which I have raised," Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement after the briefings. "One concern is whether the Iraqis can veto our military operations, and the second is over Iraqi exercise of criminal jurisdiction over U.S. forces, even under the conditions set forth."

It was not clear that Congress was in a position to force any changes. The Pentagon's spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said that American commanders were satisfied with the conditions set in the agreement, including deadlines for withdrawal and constraints on operations.

"I'm not going to get into this - the specifics of this - other than to say that how this agreement is implemented will be worked out between our commanders on the ground and the Iraqi leadership," he said. "And both seem to be very confident that it provides the framework for them to continue to do all that still needs to be done."

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Atheer Kakan and Mohammed Hussein contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.

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