Turkish newspaper reveals Maliki's wait-game

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Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyat [via alriyadh] revealed why Maliki is playing a time game and why the Kurds want to sign the agreement as soon as possible:

Iraqi government asked both Turkey and Iran to provide written guarantees on security cooperation with Iraq, in exchange for abandoning the security agreement the U.S.

The newspaper uncovered, that Baghdad is waiting for answers from Tehran and Ankara, and will cancel the whole idea of the agreement in case Iran and Turkey provide such guarantees.

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m44921&hd=&size=1&l=e


Good chess move on the part of Al-Maliki.

If he gets the written assurances from Turkey and Iran on security, the US presence becomes irrelevant, and our troops could, theoretically, come home. The big question here is, what is the Bush administration prepared to do to prevent this from happening?