THE White House has finally endorsed the text of the US-Iraq unequal treaty that will allow the US to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq until the end of 2011 and then maintain a series of giant military bases in the country afterwards.
The agreement has been approved by the Iraqi puppet cabinet by 27-1 with 10 ministers who support Moqtadr al-Sadr refusing to attend the meeting.
The Iraqi masses overwhelmingly reject any deal with the US that keeps its troops in Iraq beyond December 31 this year when the UN mandate for their occupation of Iraq ends.
The Iraqi puppet national security adviser Muwafaq al-Rubaie said last Friday that he is confident that the Iraqi ‘parliament’ will agree to the deal, next Sunday, despite the massive opposition of all Iraqis to it.
There are however due to be a number of massive demonstrations in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in the next week, leading up to Sunday’s parliamentary session.
Iraq’s two most powerful Shi’ite clerics are split over the unequal treaty.
Shi’ite leader Moqtadr al-Sadr has renamed his militia and called upon it to turn its guns on the US and UK occupiers, if the parliament ratifies the deal.
The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, while privately continuing to say that he is opposed to the unequal treaty, has pledged that he will not publicly oppose it.
Al-Sadr’s position was read to tens of thousands of supporters at Friday prayers in Baghdad’s Shi’ite Sadr City suburb, where two million people live, and also in the city of Kufa, south of Baghdad, and in the other cities of central and southern Iraq.
He wrote: ‘I repeat my call on the occupier to get out from the land of our beloved Iraq, without retaining bases or signing agreements. . . If they do stay, I urge the honourable resistance fighters to direct their weapons exclusively against the occupier.’
The draft agreement includes 31 articles and calls for US combat troops to pull out of Iraqi cities by June 2009 and from the entire country by the end of 2011.
The treaty comprises two sections: security chapters initially drafted by the Americans, and the general document, the ‘strategic framework agreement, put together by the Iraqis. On November 5, the United States gave Iraq its amended version of the pact, stated the negotiations were finished and that it would not agree to any more modifications of the document.
The American negotiators refused to put into the document clauses that forbade the US to use its Iraqi bases to attack another neighbouring state, and also rejected all attempts to place US forces and the considerable number of US contractors in Iraq under Iraqi law and jurisdiction.
The Iranian government has condemned the treaty as one that gives the US continual control over Iraq, and also bases from which to launch an attack on Iran.
Syria has also called for the ending of the occupation and has opposed US military bases remaining in Iraq.
It is certain that in the next week millions of Iraqis will take to the streets in Baghdad and in the cities in southern and central Iraq, and that after next Sunday there will be considerable clashes between Shi’ite militias and US troops in the same areas.
It is also certain that the attacks by insurgents on US forces in Baghdad and Northern and Western Iraq will be stepped up, since the continuing occupation of the country is opposed by over 90 per cent of the population.
There are also likely to be strikes by the oil workers and other workers’ trade unions throughout Iraq.
Now is the time for the insurgents to unite to drive the occupiers out of the country, and to form a provisional revolutionary government to take control of the country once the occupation has been ended.
