Iraqi Lawmakers Back Bill on U.S. Withdrawal
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 11, 2007; A12
BAGHDAD, May 10 -- A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.
The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.
"We haven't asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces; we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified, and at that point there would be a withdrawal," said Bahaa al-Araji, a member of parliament allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. "But no one can accept the occupation of his country."
In Iraq and the United States, there is deepening frustration among lawmakers and the public over President Bush's troop buildup, a policy that has yet to prevent widespread killing in Iraq. At the same time, Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are dispatching their emissaries in an urgent transatlantic gambit to shore up support.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, was in Washington this week to ask Democratic members of Congress to have patience with the "surge" and not abandon Iraq at such a precarious time. On Wednesday, Vice President Cheney landed in Baghdad to press the government to act quickly on a host of divisive political issues that the Bush administration deems threatening to long-term stability.
On his second day in Iraq, Cheney spoke to U.S. soldiers at a base near Tikrit about the difficulties they face each day. "We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. He added: "The United States, also, has made a decision: As the prime target of a global war against terror, we will stay on the offensive. We will not sit back and wait to be hit again."
But as in the United States, Iraq's lawmakers are moving further away from the views of the government, particularly on the basic issue of the American presence in their country. The draft bill is being championed by a 30-member bloc loyal to Sadr, but it has also gained support from some other Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish legislators. So far, at least 138 lawmakers have signed the proposed legislation, the slimmest possible majority in the 275-member parliament, according to Araji. Nasar al-Rubaie, another Sadr loyalist, told the Associated Press that the proposal had 144 signatures.
See also: Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation
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