Askari said Maliki plans to deliver a speech to explain to the Iraqi people why he thinks the pact should be approved.
Haidar Abadi, another senior member of parliament, said Maliki had sent the proposed agreement to senior officials in Syria and Egypt with a personal letter explaining why the deal served Iraq's interests. The letter pledged that American troops would not launch attacks against neighboring countries, a reference at least in part to a U.S. raid last month on a Syrian border village where American officials believed a militant was hiding, Abadi said.
Despite Maliki's backing, the proposed agreement still faces obstacles. Iraqi Vice President Tariq Hashimi, a Sunni, insists that the text cannot be approved by parliament alone, but must be subject to a referendum.
Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a senior member of Hashimi's party and a spokesman for his parliament bloc, said Maliki waited too long to support an agreement.
"It was supposed to be referred to the council of representatives earlier, so the council would discuss it," Jabouri said. "Yes, we want the referendum."
Maliki's allies say that if Hashimi and his Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni grouping in parliament, refuse to vote for the agreement, the pact will fail.
The prime minister decided to publicly support the accord after U.S. officials accepted most of the dozens of changes requested by the Iraqi government at the end of October, and then agreed to the two additional key changes in the last week, Askari said.
Until this month, he said, Maliki had declined to tell other Iraqi officials that he backed the agreement. But the prime minister told President Jalal Talabani and Vice Presidents Adel Abdul Mehdi and Tariq Hashimi that he supported the agreement after the Americans had accepted most of the last changes suggested by the Cabinet, Askari said.
"He played carefully and cleverly. Until recently he did not say a clear 'yes.' When he talked about this agreement's advantages and disadvantages . . . he never said, 'I'm 100% behind it,' " Askari said. "Until he had a meeting . . . of the executive council when he met Tariq, Talabani and Abdul Mehdi , he said for the first time directly, 'I'm supporting the agreement.' "
Maliki's negotiating team and U.S. officials were meeting to review the text so that it could be presented to the Cabinet on Sunday and parliament on Monday, Askari said.
