Agence France-Presse,
Washington: A planned US military accord with Iraq aims to keep security options open rather than tie “the hands of future policy makers” or leave permanent US bases there, a US official said Thursday.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey sought to dismiss fears that the US administration and President George W. Bush would use the deal to lock the next US leader into an open-ended military commitment in Iraq.
“If anybody is worried that this agreement somehow ties the hands of future policy makers, it's just simply not true,” Casey told reporters.
When asked if the agreement would include any reference to permanent bases, he replied: “We're not seeking permanent bases in Iraq. That's been a clear matter of policy for some time. No, the agreement is not a basing agreement.”
Asked how Washington would respond if Baghdad asked for bases, he replied a distinction had to be made between the legal foundation on which US troops operate over a given term and tactical decisions on how to proceed.
“Those are the decisions that are made by US commanders on the ground, working with their Iraqi counterparts, and ultimately blessed by policy makers,” he said.
Casey said the still-to-be-negotiated Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) would provide a legal framework for keeping US and Iraqi security policy options open beyond 2008, when the UN mandate for US forces ends.
For example, he added, it would give US forces the option of continuing to hunt members of Al-Qaeda and train Iraqi troops.
Such an agreement “is very much the model that we use for regular bilateral relations between the United States and most other countries in the world,” Casey said.
During a routine daily State Department briefing dominated by talk over the planned arrangement, Casey repeated it would “not tie anyone's hands” and insisted it would just “normalize” ties between the two countries.
“There is no anticipation that this is somehow going to forever lock in stone a particular level of troops or a particular set of activities or goals. Again, it's a legal framework,” he said.
