No security agreement signing before the U.S. election

Con­tra­dict­ing each oth­ers, both links refer their infor­ma­tion to a “well-informed” source, Al-Hayat reported today the following:

Well-informed told the news­pa­per that the Iraqi gov­ern­ment deter­mined to sign the secu­rity agree­ment and approved by the Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil in a mat­ter of few days… As for the immu­nity of the U.S. troops, the con­text will not be mod­i­fied, because the dura­tion of the agree­ment expires at the end of 2011.

While Al-Malaf Press report gives very dif­fer­ent information:

Well-informed sources told the news site that the secu­rity agree­ment with the United States may con­tinue after the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in next Novem­ber, despite the con­ces­sions offered by the Amer­i­can side announced by Al-Maliki dur­ing his visit to Sis­tani last Friday.

From the same above link the “source” gives us a very good update on the devel­op­ment of the dis­puted points:

About the final date for the U.S. forces with­drawal, the American-side agreed on the 30 Dec 2001adding this line to the draft agreement:

If the Iraqi gov­ern­ment did not asks to extend [the pres­ence].

Maliki demanded the removal of this line, to pre­vent any delay or com­plex­ity to the full with­drawal deadline.

Another arti­cle con­cern­ing the with­drawal of U.S. forces from cities to their mil­i­tary bases by June next year, in which the text also says:

If their pres­ence [the U.S. forces] unneeded.

This line is also rejected Al-Maliki, accord­ing to sources.

The rea­son to believe the Al-Malaf Press link is that after his visit to Sis­tani, Kuwaiti news­pa­per Al-Watan reported the following:

Accord­ing to uncon­firmed sources, Sis­tani is unen­thu­si­as­tic about the deal [SOFA], which makes the Maliki’s posi­tion very crit­i­cal, espe­cially the Supreme Council’s objections.

Maliki’s trou­bles with his allies and foes are not fin­ished yet, and he do not want to risk his future and his party;s future with sign­ing the secu­rity agree­ment before the U.S. elec­tion and he bar­gains on the next U.S. admin­is­tra­tion to get a bet­ter deal.