This is the funny side of SOFA:
While the American lawmakers are complaining about the Security agreement saying that their copy is a direct translation from the Arabic version, Iraqi lawmakers complain that their copy in Arabic is a translation from the English version.
As for Al-Hayat’s report that Maliki threatened with resignation in case the parliament rejects SOFA (which is a good news for the Kurds), this will happens sooner than Maliki himself expects.
There are some suspicious, silent movements among the Shiites and the Kurds political blocs behind the screen worth to be reported:
Admitting the difficulty to pass the security agreement, Green Zone newspaper Al-Sabah reported today that President Talabani visited Al-Hakim two days ago to discuss the last developments in the political scene, and today we learned from Nahrain that Al-Hakim met with Adel Abdul-Mahdi for the same reason above. These meetings sounds normal except that Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported today:
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani pressuring the parliament to pass the security agreement and gave remarks and suggestions of the re-formation of Nuri al-Maliki’s government.
Iraq-ina has more on this subject:
Talabani moves publicly to oust Maliki
Talabani met with the parliament speaker Al-Mashhadani to discuss the formation of National Unity Government. Sources close to Talabani said that Al-Hakim’s Supreme Council gave the green light for such movement.
Sad that the NYtimes doesn’t show you this image of the demonstration today, or even the part when they hanged George Bush with suitcase carrying SOFA in the hand.
Do you have any idea what is in the “Strategic Agreement” (not the SOFA) Maliki signed with Crocker?
Will that “Strategic Agreement” be published and go to the parliament?
To b
I reported earlier that at least one Iraqi MP complained that “SA” is not attached to SOFA.