All options are open, resistance legitimate right – Sadrist MP

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A Sadrist legislator said all options are open for the Sadirsts in accordance with their constitutional and legal rights, adding “resistance of occupation” is a legitimate right guaranteed by the international law”. “The Sadrists would not cede their national principles and would continue to seek the independence and full sovereignty of Iraq,” Fawzi Akram Tarzi, a member of parliament from the Sadrist bloc of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, told IraqiNews.com. “We would contest the voting over the security pact with the United States through the federal court on the grounds that the process was not constitutional,” he said, adding the voting was conducted before reading out the items of the agreement. Sadr had issued a statement prior to the Iraqi government’s endorsement of long-term security deal, known as the status-of-forces agreement (SOFA), in which he urged the parliament to reject it. Sadr had termed the agreement as one to “sell Iraq and its people just like Muslim lands and peoples had been sold before”. Tarzi appealed to the Presidential Board (PB) to turn down SOFA just like it did with the law on provincial councils. The Iraqi parliament on Thursday had passed SOFA with a majority of 149 out of 198 members who attended the session. The agreement legalizes the presence of 150,000 U.S. troops after a UN mandate for the United States to intervene in Iraq is due to expire at the end of this year. AmR (P)/SR 1