Washington, October 22: The Iraqi parliament failed on Wednesday to agree a new law to govern polls due in January, giving the US an excuse to keep let troops stay on in numbers into next year.
The top US military commander in Iraq is warning the Obama administration could delay its pledge to withdraw all US troops by the end of 2011.
Speaking to The Times of London, General Ray Odierno said the US could stay longer if Iraq fails to hold national elections early next year.
The US has been pressuring Iraq to hold the election while also lobbying against a proposed referendum on whether to approve the US-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA.
The agreement calls for a US withdrawal by the end of 2011. But if Iraqis reject the timetable, US troops would be forced to leave nearly a year earlier.
Doubts about the election timeline rose again Wednesday after the Iraqi parliament failed to reach agreement on an election law because of a stalemate over oil-rich Kirkuk.
Michele Flournoy, US undersecretary of defense for policy, told lawmakers in Washington that failure to resolve the issue within the next week or two would mean the elections would have to be put back until late January.
“In that instance, MNF-I (Multi-National Force-Iraq) would have to engage with the government of Iraq to do some contingency planning on how to secure the elections at a later date and that might well have implications,” she said.
US military commanders plan to keep 100,000 US troops in Iraq through the elections to provide security but then embark on a fast-paced drawdown that will reduce their numbers to 50,000 by August.
Flournoy told members of the House Armed Services Committee that “on the ground in Baghdad, here in Washington just yesterday, our focus is on trying to stick to the current election timeline.”
“Of course we will have contingency plans to adjust if necessary.”
In Baghdad, UN special envoy Ad Melkert warned Iraqi members of parliament that the delay in setting the ground rules for the election — only the second since the US-led invasion of 2003 — threatened to undermine the credibility of the process.
The vote in the Iraqi parliament was originally scheduled for last Thursday and then delayed until Monday.
Daily debates since have proved fruitless and speaker Iyad al-Samarrai referred the bill to a committee made up of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and the leaders of major political parties.
Haidar al-Abadi, an MP in Maliki’s Dawa party, said the failure to agree on the bill was a stain on parliament’s reputation.
“Parliament today proved it is unable to legislate, and the parliament’s presidency (the speaker and his two deputies) put the last nail in its coffin,” by referring the draft legislation to the senior council, he said.
At issue were proposed changes to the law that would require parties to publish full lists of their candidates rather than simply the name of their electoral list.
The spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiite majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, had strongly opposed moves by some MPs to retain the existing legislation.
Another major stumbling block has been the fate of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, which the Kurds have long demanded be incorporated in their autonomous region in the north despite the opposition of its Arab and Turkmen communities.
Constitutionally, the election must be held by January 31 and it is currently scheduled for January 16.
The electoral commission has said it requires 90 days to organise the polls, so the bill should have been passed by Monday.
The head of the electoral commission, Faraj al-Haidari, said it was now “in a very critical condition because of delays to this law” and urged parliament to “put all its efforts into speeding up processes to pass it.”
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is viewed by critics as an ‘act of aggression’ that violated international law.
Subsequent US occupation policies caused the country to descend into almost total chaos, bordering on civil war.
An estimated 1.3 million Iraqis have been killed in Iraq as a direct result of the invasion, while millions more have fled the country.
Critics argue that the recent stability announced in the country should not excuse the ‘crime’ of invading Iraq, calling for the prosecution of the war’s architects for ‘crimes against humanity’.
—Agencies