http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/86528/By Mohammed A. Salih, IPS News. Posted May 27, 2008.
Congress has asked Bush not to sign any security deals with the Iraqi government without its approval -- but this is exactly where things are headed.
WASHINGTON, May 26 (IPS) -- Iraqi parliamentarians are increasingly concerned that they are being left out of talks between Iraqi and U.S. officials over a strategic deal to determine the future relationship between the two countries, at a time when the U.S. Congress failed to include a provision in a bill to fund the Iraq and Afghan wars last week to restrict President George W. Bush's authority to sign such deals.
"We have not been informed about the content of the talks in detail so far," Abdulkhaliq Zangana, from the Kurdistan Alliance bloc in Iraq's Council of Representatives that holds 53 out of 275 parliamentary seats, told IPS in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "There is absolutely no way that the Iraqi government can make any such agreements without the consent of Iraqi parliament."
He said, however, that there is a general consensus among Iraqi parliamentary blocs for such an agreement to regulate "the future relations between the two countries" but in a way that is "in the interests of both sides."
The Iraqi and U.S. governments have been negotiating for months the formulation of two agreements, as the U.N. mandate under which U.S. troops currently operate in Iraq will terminate in December.
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