Amir Taheri reported the other day that Senator Obama was conducting a little foreign policy of his own on his trip to Iraq. NY Post:

In Monday’s Post, I discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq — and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for.

The Obama campaign has objected. While its statement says my article was “filled with distortions,” the rebuttal actually centers on a technical point: the differences between two Iraqi-US accords under negotiation — the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA, to set rules governing US military personnel in Iraq) and the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA, to settle the legal basis for the US military presence in Iraq in the months and years ahead). The Obama camp says I confused the two…If there is any confusion, it’s in Obama’s position — for the two agreements are interlinked: You can’t have any US military presence under one agreement without having settled the other accord…

My account of Obama’s message to the Iraqis was based on a series of conversations with Iraqi officials, as well as reports and analyses in the Iraqi media (including the official newspaper, Al Sabah) on the senator’s trip to Baghdad. It is also confirmed by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. In a long interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Zebari says: “Obama asked me why, in view of the closeness of a change of administration, we were hurrying the signing of this special agreement, and why we did not wait until the coming of the new administation next year and agree on some issues and matters.” Again, note that Zebari mentions a single set of agreements, encompassing both SFA and SOFA.

Zebari continues: “I told Obama that, as an Iraqi, I believe that even if there is a Democratic administration in the White House it had better continue the present policy instead of wasting a lot of time thinking what to do.” In other words, Obama was trying to derail current US policy, while Zebari was urging him not to “waste time.”

It would seem that the real disagreement is not between Mr. Taheri and Senator Obama, but between Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and the Illinois Senator. The Obama campaign says: “Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations,” while Mr. Zebari says something that seems to be the opposite. If the Foreign Minister of Iraq is to be believed, Senator Obama’s private diplomacy was far more than simply “inappropriate.”

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.