Baghdad Plans Referendum on Presence of US Troops

Iraq plans to hold a July referendum on a controversial military pact allowing United States troops to remain for another three years that Parliament is expected to adopt on Thursday in a delayed vote.

The decision to hold such a referendum could set Baghdad on a collision course with Washington, which needs the military pact to replace the UN mandate governing its more than 150,000 troops, which expires on December 31.

"It is not only the Iraqi Parliament that has a role in overseeing this agreement, but the Iraqi people," Iraq's top negotiator Muwafaq al-Rubaie told Al-Arabiya television, adding that the vote would be held on July 30.

Rubaie, who also serves as Iraq's national security adviser, spoke to the Dubai-based network shortly after Parliament delayed a vote on the pact to Thursday amid a flurry of last-minute talks.

He later insisted Washington would have to accept the decision to hold the referendum, telling AFP that "it is an Iraqi issue and the Americans have to understand our requirements."

The 275-member assembly had been expected to endorse the agreement on Wednesday, but its approval could have diminished importance if the agreement is subjected to a popular vote seven months after coming into force.

"If the Iraqi people reject the agreement in the referendum the government will have two choices, either to cancel it or renegotiate it," Reza Jawad Taqi, an MP from Parliament's main Shiite bloc, told AFP.

The pact can be amended by mutual consent and cancelled by one party with one year's notice, according to the official Arabic version of the pact.

The White House said it was still hopeful the accord would be approved, without commenting on the referendum plan.

"It's good for both Iraq and the United States, and so we'll keep an eye on what they are doing and hopefully they'll able be to get it across the goal line," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Parliament briefly convened in the afternoon to announce it would delay the final vote until Thursday at 10:00 a.m.

"The general atmosphere indicates there will be an agreement, the leaders have agreed on all the points under discussion except for one," Speaker Mahmud Mashhadani said, without giving further details.

The pact has the support of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the Kurdish alliance, and a number of independent MPs - enough for it to pass with slightly more than the requisite simple majority of 138 votes.

But Deputy Speaker Khaled al-Attiya said the government and the UIA were making a last-minute push to assemble a broader coalition.

"We do not want to pass this agreement with a difference of two or three or four votes," Attiya told AFP on Tuesday.

Attiya and other officials have said the demands made by the blocs in closed-door sessions do not concern the agreement itself, which was approved by Iraq's cabinet with the support of the main Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish blocs.

A spokesman for the National Concord Front - the main Sunni bloc with 39 votes - said that lawmakers were trying to meet the bloc's demands for political reforms linked to national reconciliation and the holding of a referendum.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a powerful party led by President Jalal Talabani, came out in support of many of the Sunni demands, including the call for a referendum, in a statement posted on their website.

But Attiya said on Tuesday that a referendum was out of the question because the Americans were sure to reject it. "We told them that is not in our hands. The Americans will reject this proposal, definitely," he told AFP.

Iraq won a number of limited concessions in the deal, including a hard timeline for withdrawal, the right to search US military cargo and the right to try US soldiers for crimes committed while they are off their bases and off-duty, according to the Arabic version of the pact, translated by AFP.

But the English version has not been made public, and US officials in Washington said there may be a public dispute between the two sides over the interpretation of certain parts of the agreement. - AFP