http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/10/obama-sought-to-sway-iraqis-on-bush
-deal/

Obama tried to sway Iraqis on Bush deal
In private conversations on troop presence, candidate pitched delay
Barbara Slavin
Friday, October 10, 2008

EXCLUSIVE:

At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive
agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the
president shouldn't be allowed to enact the deal without congressional
approval.

Mr. Obama's conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington
Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the
Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the
appropriateness of a White House candidate's contacts with foreign governments
while the sitting president is conducting a war.

Some of the specifics of the conversations remain the subject of dispute. Iraqi
leaders purported to The Times that Mr. Obama urged Baghdad to delay an
agreement with Mr. Bush until next year when a new president will be in office
- a charge the Democratic campaign denies.

Mr. Obama spoke June 16 to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari when he was in
Washington, according to both the Iraqi Embassy in Washington and the Obama
campaign. Both said the conversation was at Mr. Zebari's request and took place
on the phone because Mr. Obama was traveling.

However, the two sides differ over what Mr. Obama said.

"In the conversation, the senator urged Iraq to delay the [memorandum of
understanding] between Iraq and the United States until the new administration
was in place," said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq's ambassador to the United States.

He said Mr. Zebari replied that any such agreement would not bind a new
administration. "The new administration will have a free hand to opt
out," he
said the foreign minister told Mr. Obama.

Mr. Sumaidaie did not participate in the call, he said, but stood next to Mr.
Zebari during the conversation and was briefed by him immediately afterward.

The call was not recorded by either side, and Mr. Zebari did not respond to
repeated telephone and e-mail messages requesting direct comment.

Mr. Obama has called for a phased U.S. withdrawal of all but a residual force
from Iraq over 16 months, a position the Iraqi government appears to have
embraced.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have been struggling for months to finalize a deal
that will allow U.S. troops to remain after Dec. 31, when a U.N. mandate
sanctioning the military presence expires. Iraqi officials have said that the
main impediment is agreement over a timeline for U.S. redeployment and immunity
from Iraqi prosecution for U.S. troops and civilians.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Mr. Obama does not object to a
short-term status of forces agreement, or SOFA.

Mr. Obama told Mr. Zebari in June that a SOFA "should be completed before
January and it must include immunity for U.S. troops," Miss Morigi wrote in an
e-mail.

However, the Democratic nominee said a broader strategic framework agreement
governing a longer-term U.S. presence in Iraq "should be vetted by
Congress,"
she wrote.

She said Mr. Obama said the same thing when he met in July with Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Mr. Zebari in Baghdad.

A recent article in the New York Post quoted Mr. Zebari as saying that Mr.
Obama asked Iraqi leaders in July to delay any agreement on a reduction of U.S.
troops in Iraq until the next U.S. president takes office.

Miss Morigi denied this. She said the request for Senate vetting was bipartisan
and noted that the first Obama-Zebari conversation took place 12 days after
four other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - including
Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -
wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates urging consultation over any agreements committing U.S. troops and
civilian contractors to Iraq "for an extended period of time."


AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES Sen. Barack Obama, here with Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani (left) in July, has called for a phased U.S. withdrawal of all
but a residual force, a position Baghdad appears to have embraced.

When Mr. Obama spoke to Mr. Zebari, he was speaking in his capacity as a
senator and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Miss Morigi
said. "It's obvious that others are trying to mischaracterize Obama's position,
[but] on numerous occasions he has made it perfectly clear that the United
States only has one president at a time and that the administration speaks with
one voice."

Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who accompanied Mr. Obama in Iraq along
with Mr. Hagel, said they made "no suggestion of any type of delay" in any
agreements.


A congressional aide who was also present and spoke on the condition of
anonymity said the senators asked for a congressional role similar to that
required by the Iraqi Constitution for Iraq's parliament.

Still, the fact that the Illinois Democrat on June 3 clinched enough delegates
to be assured the Democratic presidential nomination gives his comments special
force - something that also applies to the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain
of Arizona, a key proponent of the surge of extra U.S. forces to Iraq last
year.


AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES HOT SEAT: Democratic presidential nominee
Barack Obama meets with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad in July. Mr.
Obama's talks with Iraqi leaders have stirred controversy.

As a U.S. senator, Mr. Obama "has a foot in both camps," said
Ross K. Baker, a
professor of political science at Rutgers University. "It's within the
jurisdiction of his committee and something he's entitled to speak about. It
doesn't raise a red flag for me."

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on the matter.

Leslie Phillips, a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, also declined
to comment even though an embassy note-taker was present during the senators'
meeting in Iraq. "The embassy's role is purely to facilitate the
meetings," she
said.

Presidential nominees traditionally have not intervened personally in
foreign-policy disputes, although campaign surrogates have done so.

Historian Robert Dallek has documented meetings with South Vietnamese diplomats
in 1968 by Republican vice-presidential candidate Spiro Agnew and Anna
Chennault, widow of Gen. Claire Chennault, the commander of "Flying Tiger"
forces in China during World War II.

Mr. Dallek, author of "Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times
1961-1973,"
obtained tapes of the conversations from bugs the Johnson administration had
placed in the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington.

Negotiations to end the Vietnam War were taking place in Paris at the time
between the Johnson administration and the North and South Vietnamese.

Mr. Agnew and Mrs. Chennault "signaled the South Vietnamese that they would get
a better deal with Richard Nixon as president instead of the Democrat" Hubert
Humphrey, Mr. Dallek said.

"Johnson was furious and said that Nixon was guilty of treason," Mr. Dallek
said, but neither he nor Mr. Humphrey disclosed the matter before the election,
which Mr. Nixon won.

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