Word: sofas
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...since the start of Saddam Hussein's trial have Iraqis been so transfixed by a legal and legislative debate. The to-and-fro over the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the U.S. has turned parliamentary politics into prime-time entertainment. In restaurants and caf?s across Baghdad, TV screens normally featuring music videos and Arabic soap operas are instead tuned to Iraqi news channels that seem at times to be devoted exclusively to the SOFA story. It's democracy as reality...
...riveting stuff. For the second straight day, the SOFA discussion in parliament turned into a shouting match as MPs on both sides of the debate hurled insults and accusations of treachery at one another. The deal currently on the table calls for the U.S. to withdraw its troops by the end of 2011 and gives the Iraqi government a much greater say in what U.S. troops do until then. Opponents of the deal warn that the government has signed secret codicils that give the U.S. far greater leeway than advertised and may keep American troops in Iraq indefinitely. Ajil Abdel...
...SOFA, passed by Maliki's cabinet last weekend, needs to be approved by the 275-member parliament. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most important Shi'ite cleric, has said any deal with the U.S. must be passed by a big majority in order to be truly legitimate in the eyes of the people. That seems unlikely. If the Sunni-Sadrist-secular alliance can break off a few MPs from Maliki's own Shi'ite-Kurdish block, they may even be able to defeat the proposition...
...press conference, he lambasted naysayers as political opportunists who were trying to hold his government for ransom, in effect working against the national interest. His anger was directed not only at the Sunni, Sadrist and secular blocks in parliament, which have formed a loose coalition to oppose the SOFA; he also took an unrelated sideswipe at Kurdish politicians, without whose help he cannot hope to have the agreement ratified...
...that have taken place in several cities. Or he may just be desperate: if he can't break the coalition opposed to the deal, the deal is effectively dead. Hoping, perhaps, to frighten his opponents into their senses, he painted a grim picture of what would happen if the SOFA weren't ratified. Iraq, he said, would have to ask the United Nations to renew the mandate that allows the U.S. military to occupy the country, and that would mean Iraq's security would remain in American hands...