WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush on Wednesday promised to consider Baghdad's proposed changes to a controversial US-Iraq security pact, but warned against shifts that risked "undermining" the accord.
"We received amendments today from the government. We're analyzing those amendments. We obviously want to be helpful and constructive without undermining basic principles," he told reporters.
Bush, who did not spell out what sorts of changes to the planned Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) would be unacceptable, declared he was "very hopeful and confident that the SOFA will get passed."
The US president spoke as he held White House talks with Massud Barzani, the president of Iraq's northern Kurdish government, which has given the embattled SOFA consistent and vocal support.
"We do believe that it is in the interest of the Iraqi government, it's in the interest of this country, and we have been and we will continue to support it and support its ratification," Barzani said through an interpreter.
Bush, who leaves office January 20, discussed the agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Monday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, without offering further details.
The US president had hoped to have the accord in hand by July 31, but now is all but certain not to see it approved before the November 4 elections to choose his successor.
The draft version has drawn fire from Iraqi political figures on grounds that it undermines their war-torn country's sovereignty, likely to be a key theme in local and regional elections set for January 31.
Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr opposes the pact, while top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has warned through a statement from his office that any final deal must not harm Iraqi sovereignty.
The Iraqi cabinet on Tuesday authorized Maliki to negotiate changes in the pact, which will lay out the rights and responsibilities of US forces in Iraq beyond December 2008 when their present UN mandate expires.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Geoff Morrell said proposed Iraqi amendments to the draft accord "are in the process of being translated and they will then be evaluated by our team. This process, I believe, will likely take several days."
"We want to be very deliberate about this, want to have a clear understanding of what precisely the changes they are looking to make entail," he said. "It is our intention, certainly, to listen to them, to pay them proper respect."
Under the current proposal, the fruit of seven months of often difficult negotiations, US forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by 2009 and from the whole country by 2011.
It also gives Iraq the power to prosecute US soldiers who are accused of committing serious crimes outside their bases and when off duty.
Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, one of the negotiators, said the security deal would prevent the US military from launching attacks on Iraq's neighbours.
"There is a very clear article in the SOFA draft that says the US cannot, should not, launch any operation from Iraqi soil against other countries," Rubaie told reporters in the central city of Kut.
His comments followed the weekend raid by US troops on a village in northeast Syria which Damascus said killed eight civilians.
A US official on Monday said the incursion targeted a top Iraqi smuggler of foreign fighters who used the area just inside Syria to launch attacks.
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