Up to 100 Iraqi lawmakers on Monday signed a document calling on the Iraqi government to demand departure of U.S. troops from the country as scheduled by the end of 2011, the Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.
“The legislatures have signed 100 signatures, calling on the government to demand the departure of the U.S. occupation forces, in compliance with the security agreement signed between Baghdad and Washington,” the Iraqi independent agency quoted Uday Awad, a member of the Ahrar parliamentary bloc, as saying.
Awad also said that his bloc urges other Iraqi political blocs to take similar step to practice pressure on the Iraqi government to demand a complete pullout of U.S. troops from the country, agency said on its website.
Al-Ahrar bloc is a group of Iraqi lawmakers loyal to the anti-U. S. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The group is part of the Shiite Alliance, which includes Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Dawa Party.
Baghdad and Washington are in debate whether the U.S. troops need to extend the presence of its troops in Iraq beyond the 2011 deadline.
U.S. military forces are to pull out completely from Iraq by the end of 2011, according to the security pact named Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which was signed late in 2008 between Baghdad and Washington.
