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Iraq to vote on fate of non-US troops
AFP - Monday, December 22
BAGHDAD (AFP) - - Iraqi lawmakers will vote on Monday on the fate of non-US foreign troops in the country after a last-ditch compromise was hammered out between parliamentary leaders, MPs said.
With a UN mandate for foreign troops due to expire on December 31, there is too little time to push through a bill, so parliament will vote on a simple resolution allowing the government to finalise new arrangements.
"The Iraqi parliament will vote tomorrow on a motion authorising the government to sign a deal with non-US nations' forces to determine the time of their departure, which should be before the end of July 2009," Ali al-Adeeb, a prominent MP in the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, told reporters on Sunday.
Salim Abdallah, spokesman for National Concord Front, the main Sunni bloc in parliament, said the decision to vote on the resolution on Monday was taken because parliament will go on holidays for a week starting Tuesday.
A parliamentary source said the change of plan came after long discussions between the speaker, Mahmud Mashhadani, and the heads of the leading parliamentary blocs, also involving legal advisers.
The resolution requires a simple majority to be adopted.
Confusion had reigned in parliament on Saturday over whether a vote had taken place on a bill initially intended to set new rules for the presence of non-US foreign troops, mainly British forces.
On Wednesday, the first reading of the bill took place amid uproar in the aftermath of the protest by an an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at visiting US President George W. Bush last Sunday.
Mashhadani lost his temper during Wednesday's row, branding some MPs as "sons of dogs". He announced his resignation, but later retracted it.
The confusion was so great that official stenographers were unable to write up the normal transcript of the session.
When discussion of the bill resumed on Saturday, some MPs thought they were voting against the proposed law on non-US forces, while others thought the vote was to invalidate the decision made during Wednesday's rowdy session.
The United States, which supplies 95 percent of foreign troops in Iraq, has already signed a Status of Forces Agreement with the Baghdad government, under which its combat forces can remain in the country until the end of 2011.
The resolution to be put to Iraqi MPs on Monday would mandate the government to sign bilateral deals with each of the other coalition countries which still have troops on Iraqi soil.
Monday's vote will mostly affect the presence of forces from Britain, the key US ally in the 2003 invasion whose 4,100 men and women are concentrated in the south of the country.
During a surprise visit to Iraq last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that his country's troops would wrap up their mission by the end of May and most would be out by the end of July.
His Defence Secretary John Hutton said on Sunday that the Iraqi parliament's apparent failure to back the bill on non-US foreign troops was only "a minor hiccup."
Asked on Sky Television what would happen if no agreement was in place by December 31, Hutton said: "That would be a very serious situation and obviously we couldn't let it happen, but I don't think it will happen."
"I think this is a minor hiccup... We have contingency plans. The safety of our guys out there is our top priority. There will have to be an agreement, a proper agreement, before our guys are out on the streets."
Australia, Estonia, Romania and El Salvador also have small numbers of troops in Iraq.
Brown's predecessor Tony Blair was widely criticised for his decision to join the US administration in the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
A total of 178 British soldiers have died in Iraq since the invasion, including 136 from hostile action.
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Enlarge Photo
Iraqi parliamentarians a sesson of parliament in Baghdad's secure Green Zone in September. A last-gasp compromise will allow the future of non-US foreign troops in Iraq to be put to the vote in parliament on Monday, the final day before lawmakers start their year-end break, MPs have said.
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