Articles | US 'agrees' to withdraw troops

US 'agrees' to withdraw troops

Published: Monday, 25 August 2008, 8:07PM

The Prime Minister of Iraq has claimed all US troops will leave by the end of 2011 but Wahington has said no final deal has been reached.

Nuri al-Maliki said: "There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil."

He said: "An open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces."

Mr al-Maliki's remarks were the most explicit statement yet that the increasingly assertive Iraqi government expects the US presence to end in three years as part of a deal between Washington and Baghdad to allow them to stay beyond this year.

Previously, Iraqi officials have said they want US troops to end patrols of Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year and combat troops to leave Iraq by 2011, but Washington has been reluctant to embrace a firm deadline for all troops to go.

A bilateral pact is needed to replace a UN Security Council resolution adopted after the US-led invasion in 2003, which has formed the legal basis for the American troop presence ever since but expires at the end of this year.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said a draft agreement had been prepared but it needed to "go through a number of levers in the Iraqi political system before we actually have an agreement from the Iraqi side."

He said: "Until we have a deal, we don't have a deal."