Rice to visit Iraq soon, SOFA process changed

Maliki’s inter­view with the Times shifted all the atten­tions away from this report pub­lished on the Green Zone news­pa­per Al-Sabaah. The “not very” inter­est­ing part is that Con­doleezza Rice will visit Iraq in the com­ing days to put the “final touches” on SOFA agreement.

The inter­est­ing part is that SOFA’s Iraqi process is changed.

Maliki’s gov­ern­ment turned the polit­i­cal pro­ce­dures around, instead of pass­ing the final doc­u­ment to the Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil to approve the final doc­u­ment and then pass­ing it to the par­lia­ment, a polit­i­cal deci­sion issued today that the par­lia­ment should approves the final doc­u­ment before pass­ing it to the Pres­i­den­tial Council.

What this change means?

By default, the approval of the Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil means that the final doc­u­ment id valid and pass­ing it to the par­lia­ment is a sym­bolic procedures.

Turn­ing this process around means more delay since the par­lia­ment is divided on SOFA’s approval and that can takes months before the parl. Mem­bers can reach “some­thing” and all that time SOFA is still on halt and invalid. This allows Maliki to buy more time.