BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has agreed to support a contentious security agreement with the United States and plans to urge his Cabinet to back the recently revised pact, two senior Shiite Muslim officials said Friday.
The move would be a huge step toward ratifying the deal, which sets out conditions for U.S. military conduct in Iraq as well as a timeline for troops' withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011. It has encountered strong opposition from several Iraqi political parties and factions.
Maliki had declined to openly back the new security agreement. Close advisors said the prime minister changed his position after U.S. officials accepted two key conditions: the removal of any language from the text that might allow U.S. troops to remain in Iraqi cities past June 2009, and specifying that U.S. military personnel must request permission from the Iraqi government to search homes.
Maliki has reluctantly accepted that he could not expect any guarantee that a U.S. soldier suspected of wrongdoing during a mission would be tried in an Iraqi court, said confidant Sami Askari, a prominent Shiite lawmaker.
"We don't expect to have a perfect agreement," Askari said in an interview. "But he can now go to the people and politicians and say, 'Look, this is far better for Iraq to accept this than going to the other options.' It is not perfect . . . but it is better than the extension" of the United Nations Security Council mandate that authorized the American military presence in Iraq until the end of this year.
In late October, a senior Bush administration official said that Maliki had started moving toward the U.S. position. On Sunday, a U.S. Embassy official said that he expected Maliki to push for the agreement because he believes the prime minister sees the United States as a guarantee against a military coup, a counterbalance to Iran and a bridge to relations with hostile Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia.
"He wants us here. The question for him is how can he be sure that the [security agreement] is going to pass," the U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
If approved, it would give Iraq authority over all U.S. military operations in Iraq and would require American troops to leave Iraqi cities by the summer of 2009 and the country at the end of 2011. It also would define how the two countries would handle cases in which U.S. military personnel are accused of crimes in Iraq.
