Word: maliki
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Boosting the strength and confidence of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has long been a Bush Administration goal in Iraq, yet the stronger and more confident al-Maliki becomes at home, the more inclined he has been to defy his U.S. patron...
...presence of U.S. troops in Iraq after their current U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. With the clock ticking on a Bush Administration that is keen to finalize a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) before the expiration of the U.N. mandate - and its own - al-Maliki is holding out for the U.S. to back down from its demands for legal immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq and for their right to arrest and detain Iraqis...
...Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Haj Hammoud - the lead negotiator on the SOFA talks until al-Maliki recently took over - is confident the Iraqis will get their way. Already, says Hammoud, the U.S. has conceded that private security contractors working with the U.S. military and embassy staff will no longer enjoy immunity. But even if the Americans hold firm on the final two sticking points (which is likely) al-Maliki can grudgingly approve the deal and still ultimately get his way. That's because the agreement must be ratified by the Iraqi parliament, which is unlikely to occur without...
...clever," Hammoud says of al-Maliki. "He is thinking in a realistic way: without the agreement of everybody, the deal is not acceptable...
...clear it's shopping for 36 F-16 jet fighters that could end up costing the war-weary nation close to $4 billion. While it's easy to understand why the U.S. is leery of jeopardizing recent security gains with a hasty troop withdrawal - despite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisting on a timetable for ending the American military presence - the logic of Baghdad's effort to acquire a fleet of sophisticated warplanes is less clear...