Word: pact
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Prime Minister's popularity in the Iraqi streets may provide another example of fading sectarianism. Al-Maliki has gained a wide base of support across Sunni and Shi'ite communities over the past year for taking a hard stance in negotiations over the new U.S.-Iraqi security pact and for playing tough with both Shi'ite and Sunni insurgents. "I'll vote for Maliki's party," says Rafaat Khalid Ahmed, a university lecturer in Baghdad's predominantly Sunni Mansour district. "He showed courage in dealing with the major issues in Iraq, and that helped him defeat the militias...
...been stripped of its weapons, confined to its base at Camp Ashraf about 80 miles north of Baghdad and guarded by U.S. troops. The group is hardly an immediate threat to Iraqi security, or even particularly relevant to the challenges Iraq faces under the new U.S.-Iraq security pact...
...government stronghold, back to the Iraqis. The Americans also vacated the compound's ornate Republican Palace - Saddam Hussein's jewel, which the U.S. used as its administrative and then diplomatic headquarters throughout the occupation. U.S. soldiers are now technically guests on Iraqi soil under the new U.S.-Iraqi security pact...
That mission may become a greater challenge within the parameters of the pact. Vermeesch and his battalion are based in a former Shi'ite militia hot spot, which promises only more sectarian tensions as Sunni families who fled the town begin to return to their old neighborhoods, which remain dominated by the Shi'a. Attacks are much fewer than last year but still average one a day, Vermeesch says. Now, under the security agreement, U.S. forces can no longer carry out a raid, search, cordon or even a patrol without their Iraqi counterparts. In the past two weeks, four minor...
...military will face real hurdles as it pressures the Iraqis to carry out their end of the now formalized bargain. But not all the constraints laid out in the security pact are binding. A commanding coalition general still wields the power to authorize any operation unilaterally, and U.S. troops don't need to consult the Iraqis if responding to an imminent threat or in self-defense - a provision so broad that most of the limits on U.S. troop operations could effectively be bypassed if commanders deem it necessary to do so. "I would not view them as loopholes," Vermeesch says...