Missing Links blog’s reading of the Arab press seems to be saying that Maliki’s call for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops is more rhetoric than actual policy. The Al Sabaah paper said that the government is asking for a U.S. withdrawal within five years, but this is conditioned by the security situation at that time. Maliki’s spokesman Ali Dabbagh then told the paper that Baghdad doesn’t actually have a set time limit for the U.S., but that any agreement signed needs to include the idea of one. The day before a Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council member told Al Hayat that the U.S. and Iraq should discuss the matter, but that a specific date should not be set. In the same paper, Sadr’s leading spokesman Salah al-Obeidi accused the government of trying to placate the public and their discontent over any U.S.-Iraqi deal by making statements about forcing the Americans to leave, but that this was all talk, and not something that Maliki could actually do.
SOURCES:
Missing Links Blog, “Backtracking,” 7/9/08
- “On the difference between a ‘time-limit’ and ‘the concept of a time-limit,’” 7/10/08
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