Al-Maliki says Iraq gains "sovereignty" with US draw-down (1st Lead)

Aug 31, 2010, 14:02 GMT

Baghdad - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday said the country was gaining back its sovereignty, with combat operations of the United States military coming to a close.

'Today Iraq is sovereign, independent and takes its own decisions for the present and future,' al-Maliki said in a televised address on the final day of the US combat mission.

The premier earlier met with US Vice President Joe Biden, who arrived Monday evening in Baghdad for events to mark the changing US capacity and said Iraq was 'much safer' than in the past.

He was also reprising a role he played in July, when he last visited Baghdad and held talks with Iraq's political parties in a bid to help end a five-month-long post-election stalemate preventing the formation a new government.

Al-Maliki's party, the State of Law list, came in a close second in the March 7 poll, winning two seats less than his arch-rival, former premier Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyah list. The third largest bloc is headed by Shiite cleric Amar al-Hakim and includes the anti-US Sadrist movement.

No party has an outright majority and they have been unable to reach a coalition deal.

The country's political deadlock was being compounded by a recent upsurge in violence against civilians and security forces, which al- Maliki said were 'desperate' acts by insurgents. He promised Iraqis better security.

Iraqi politicians were divided over how effective the Biden visit would turn out.

'All political blocs have set their eyes on Biden,' Izzat al- Shabandar, with the State of Law list, told the German Press Agency dpa.

Like other members of parliament, he believed the vice president would like to see the two largest blocs in Iraq sitting together in a joint cabinet, a formula that has been suggested in the past.

'There is no United States candidate in terms of the next Iraqi government,' insisted Antony Bilken, a national security advisor to the vice president.

'Options for forming the Iraqi government are the concern of the political elites in this country, and I do not think that Biden will force any new options on us,' said Jamal al-Batikh from the Iraqiya list, which bills itself as a secular group.

'Politicians in the country realize the solution should be an Iraqi one,' he added in an interview.

The more hard line Shiite bloc in parliament, led by the cleric Hakim, wants to be part of the government and has rejected an alliance between the larger parties which would leave them in the opposition.

During his stay, Biden was expected to sit with all the main blocs.

Iraqi President Jalal Talibani, a Kurdish leader, was among the first to meet the visiting vice president who said he wanted 'input' from Iraqi politicians ahead of a key speech to be delivered later by US president Barack Obama in Washington.

At the start of the meeting with Talibani, Biden quipped that he has been to Iraq enough times to qualify for Iraqi citizenship.

Biden's visit is his sixth to Baghdad since 2009 and comes as the Iraqi prime minister said that Baghdad's relationship with Washington was entering a 'new era,' to be based less on military cooperation and more on diplomatic ties and economic links.

Some 50,000 US troops, with only advisory, training and counter- terrorism capacity, are to remain in Iraq until 2011.