The new (US-sponsored) Iraqi parliament lobby to extend the US presence in Iraq

The secret meet­ings among polit­i­cal fac­tions in Iraq to extend the pres­ence of the US forces [I reported about two weeks ago] are no secret anymore.

Sources con­firmed that the renewed nego­ti­a­tions between the Iraqiya List and the State of Law is an Amer­i­can desire came with the US con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion that recently vis­ited Sulay­maniyah, ask­ing the Kur­dish regional pres­i­dent Mas­soud Barzani to inter­vene to form a lobby within the Par­lia­ment to extend the US forces pres­ence in the coun­try, after the end of the year.

Sharp crit­i­cism made by Allawi recently against Maliki’s gov­ern­ment aimed to pres­sure the Prime Min­is­ter to imple­ment Al-Iraqiya’s demands as con­di­tions to join this project. The main points of these demands are:

The replace­ment of some of the insti­tu­tions with new ones headed by ele­ments loyal to Al-Iraqiya List, the can­cel­la­tion of the Account­abil­ity and Jus­tice Com­mis­sion, and the rein­stall for­mer army offi­cers who are loyal to Al-Iraqiya List.

Maliki’s fears is that Al-Iraqiya will try to take advan­tage of his request to extend the US pres­ence try­ing to hit the cred­i­bil­ity of the State of Law Coali­tion. Reported today that the U.S. Ambas­sador in Iraq James Jef­frey and the com­man­der of U.S. forces, Gen­eral Lloyd Austin are try­ing to per­suade Allawi, not to use the Maliki’s request of “extend­ing the pres­ence of the US forces” against the Prime Minister.

Allawi under­stands that his accep­tance or refusal will decide the future of the US forces in Iraq, Al-Iraqiya leader wants to achieve more than he asked for start­ing with crit­i­ciz­ing the US in today’s inter­view with the Jor­dan­ian news­pa­per Al-Arab Al-Youm, he said the following:

Unfor­tu­nately, the secu­rity, econ­omy and ser­vices sit­u­a­tion is very bad with the pres­ence of U.S. forces since nine years, the gov­ern­ments could not achieve a quan­tum leap. There is a grow­ing vac­uum in Iraq filled by the regional pow­ers and its pres­ence on the rise even with the pres­ence of the US,.…

We and the peo­ple of Iraq do not yet know what was the offer from Iraq to the United States or vice versa, pres­ence or no pres­ence? Part pres­ence or wide pres­ence? Com­bat mis­sions train­ing, or human­i­tar­ian? Places of the pres­ence? Period of the presence?

Al-Iraqiya threat­ened to boy­cott the polit­i­cal process and with­draw from the Leg­isla­tive and Exec­u­tive Coun­cils. This direct threat is not the first of its kind, it has been repeated by lead­ers of Al-Iraqiya List each time the fac­tional, per­sonal inter­ests opposed the inter­ests of their rivals in power.

The pres­ence of the U.S. forces in Iraq became a “fire­ball” exchanged among the polit­i­cal forces, main stream media say that the com­ing two days are cru­cial for the polit­i­cal process .. a true part­ner­ship agree­ment or the col­lapse of the polit­i­cal process, but I think there will be another rounds of nego­ti­a­tions to for­mu­late and tweak the agree­ment, add to this find­ing a solu­tion for the Sadrists in the new agreement.