The U.S. accepted the French advice on SOFA

This is the 12 time Iraq’s for­eign min­is­ter Zebari says “The United States and Iraq are close to reach­ing a long-delayed secu­rity deal”.

Assafir reporter in France said today that the U.S. adopted an advice of the French diplo­mat who is in charge with the Iraqi affairs to solve the two obstacles:

- Pro­vide a time table for the U.S. forces withdrawal.

- Immu­nity of the U.S. soldiers.

The advice is:

The United State should pro­vide a flex­i­ble “hori­zon” for the with­drawal of their troops and not a strict timetable dif­fi­cult to fulfill.

As for the sec­ond obsta­cle, both sides [U.S. and Iraq] will reach an agree­ment that the Amer­i­can sol­diers will face courts in the United States by a deci­sion taken by the Iraqi government.

The most impor­tant about this arti­cle is this point:

The source said that sign­ing the SOFA is longer con­di­tioned by the expi­ra­tion of the UN man­date in Decem­ber because extend­ing the period is a rou­tinely, tech­ni­cal issue.

But he is very opti­mistic that both sides will sign the SOFA before the end of this year for this reason:

The Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Al-Maliki wants to be the “Iraqi leader” who expelled the Amer­i­cans out of the coun­try as a his­toric event.