Bush, Maliki sign pact on future relations

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki signed a joint declaration Monday that sets out principles for a broad agreement to be negotiated in the next year that would define a future relationship between their countries and guarantee a U.S. troop presence in Iraq for at least a few more years.

Iraqi and U.S. officials said next year would be the last in which both countries ask for a United Nations Security Council resolution that tasks America with guaranteeing Iraq’s security.

The new joint declaration calls for future political, economic and security relations between Baghdad and Washington to be negotiated in 2008. Baghdad also will ask the United Nations to remove it from Chapter 7 status, a legal designation that has in effect classified Iraq as a pariah state since ex-dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

“The United States has promised that the multinational forces will stay under a United Nations mandate only until the end of 2008,” Maliki said in a televised address. “The final extension for the multinational forces under the U.N. mandate will finish in 2008.”

Still, Shiite Muslim parliament member Haidar Abadi, who serves as an advisor to Maliki and belongs to the prime minister’s Islamic Dawa Party, said Iraq envisioned a need for the U.S. military to stay longer than the end of 2008.

“It will help Iraq protect its borders against foreign aggression and it will help the Iraqi government fighting terrorists: Al Qaeda, the Saddamists and the outlaws, those outside the law,” Abadi said.

Iraq will want the U.S. to continue training Iraqi troops for the foreseeable future, Abadi said, but he made it clear that Iraq did not envision a relationship in which U.S. bases remained in the country half a century after they were established.

“No military bases will be offered for long terms like in South Korea,” Abadi said, adding that what was being discussed was a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces in the next few years.

“If the current security improvements are safeguarded and continue, we are hoping a huge number of U.S. forces are withdrawn. . . . It depends in the next year whether the Iraqi security forces have the confidence to carry on their task without any help from them,” Abadi said.

Another important element of the declaration for Iraq’s Shiite-led government is that it commits the United States to backing the democratically elected Maliki government, which some U.S. military commanders and politicians have criticized as ineffectual.

“There have been calls by some military commanders in the United States that Iraq is not ripe for democracy,” Abadi said. “We wanted the commitment from the United States with this agreement that all parties will protect and support democracy in Iraq and to safeguard the constitution.”

He added, “This sends the signal to our enemies: There is no going back to square one.”

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the top White House advisor on Iraq, said the agreement was not binding but would set the agenda for talks with Iraq on economic, diplomatic and security relations.

It was completed as the Bush administration sought to draw attention to improved security in parts of Iraq. The text calls for the U.S. to help protect Iraq’s natural resources, including oil, and commits America to assisting the nation on the path to a free-market economy.

Lute said the message of the agreement was that “Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own, but it won’t have to stand alone.”

But Lute refused to close the door on the possibility of permanent military bases, saying it would be a subject for future negotiations. He also said that as part of working out a long-term pact, the two countries would seek to achieve reconciliation among Iraq’s warring sects, assuring all parties that the United States was an active partner and that they should not “hedge their bets.”

The declaration of principles also calls on the United States to promote private investment in Iraq and steer further U.S. financial and technical assistance to Iraqi institutions.

Both Maliki and Lute say the next step is to complete the broader pact by the end of July. That timetable would allow for more improvements in Iraq just as the U.S. presidential election was entering its final months.

Maliki said the pact would be put before the Iraqi parliament well ahead of the expiration of the U.N. Security Council resolution.

In a statement, the White House said the agreement “moves us closer to normalized, bilateral relations” with Iraq, adding that it hoped the Security Council would renew for one year the mandate for a multinational force deployed there. The current mandate expires Dec. 31.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi journalist living in Jordan who has ties to the late Hussein’s banned Baath Party said Monday that gunmen raided his Baghdad family home and killed seven children and his brother, brother-in-law and sister.

Dia al-Kawwaz, editor of the website Shabeqat Akhbar al-Iraq (Network of Iraqi News), said the attackers burst into the home in the Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab on Sunday.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said it had no record of the attack. Iraqi police reported that an Iraqi man driving with his wife and three children was shot dead by U.S. forces in the western city of Ramadi, but there was no immediate information available from the Americans.

james.gerstenzang@latimes.com

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Hameed, Wail Alhafith and Saif Rasheed in Baghdad contributed to this report.