Female lawmakers rule out reaching unified stance on SOFA

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Female lawmakers from different parliamentary blocs ruled out reaching a unified stance on the U.S. troop withdrawal deal know as status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) because of the different opinions of their blocs. “Female legislators can not adopt a unified stance on the troop withdrawal agreement with Washington as their blocs have different opinions,” Shaza al-Abousi, from the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front (IAF), told IraqiNews.com. “The female MPs support the agreement in general if the necessary guarantees are met,” she added. “As a member of the human rights committee, I have some demands, mainly accelerating the release of prisoners and lifting U.S. soldiers’ immunity,” al-Abousi noted. The Iraqi cabinet last week had approved with an overwhelming majority of 27 votes to one the security deal between Iraq and the United States and was referred to Parliament for voting. SOFA should legalize the presence of U.S. forces on Iraqi territories after the end of this year, when the deadline given for a UN Security Council mandate for the U.S. army to intervene in Iraq is scheduled to expire. SOFA had drawn wide-scale local popular and political controversy after the cabinet endorsed it on last week, particularly from the Sadrist bloc of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr. In accordance with the Iraqi constitution, SOFA cannot be effective before the parliament approves it. Sadrist member of parliament Zaynab al-Kanani, supporting Abousi’s opinion, said “female lawmakers can not reach a unified stance on the agreement, as some of the them do not know its details and just count on their bloc leader in this respect”. For her part, an MP from the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), Jenan al-Ubeidi, ruled out that the female lawmakers could have a different stance from their blocs. “The female MPs did not think to have an independent stance on the agreement because the parliamentary bloc is a political one and no MP could have a separate decision on such issues,” she explained. Regarding her opinion on the agreement, she said “there are three options to deal with the U.S. presence in Iraq; extending the U.S. presence, demanding to end it or to continue what has been agreed on”. She supported the third option, regarding agreement on the forces’ status, because, according to her, withdrawing the forces now will threaten the political process and the Iraqi forces, which are not yet ready for such responsibility. SH (I)/AmR 2