Obama's win boosts prospects for US-Iraq troop pact

BAGHDAD - Barack Obama was elected only two days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.

Iraqi Shi'ite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about US troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

"Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011," said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shi'ite party. "If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama."

Obama has said that he favors a 16-month schedule for withdrawing combat brigades, a timetable about twice as fast as that provided for in the draft American and Iraqi accord.

Many Shi'ite politicians had been under intense pressure from Iranian leaders not to sign a security agreement. Iran, which has close ties to Shi'ite politicians, has feared the agreement would lay the groundwork for a permanent US troop presence in Iraq that would threaten Iran.

Now, the Iraqis appear to be feeling less pressure from Iran, perhaps because the Iranians are less worried that an Obama government would try to force a regime change in their country.

In recent weeks Ameri, who spent years in Iran and leads the Badr Corps, a one-time paramilitary arm of the Supreme Council, was one of several senior party members who appeared to be reflecting Iran's concerns with a reluctance to endorse the pact.

Given the volatile and fractious state of Iraqi politics, the security agreement could still be delayed. But with Iraqis believing that Obama, as president, would move faster to withdraw US troops, Iraqi and US officials said obstacles to a security agreement appeared to be fading.

Jabeer Habib, an independent Shi'ite lawmaker and a political scientist at Baghdad University, put it simply: "Obama's election shifts Iraq into a new position."

Obama's election also coincided with the US negotiators' acceptance of many of the changes Iraqis demanded in the agreement, which created an overall picture that was easier for Iraqis and their neighbors - Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia - to accept.

The US negotiators sent a new version of the agreement to Iraqi leaders yesterday that included many of the changes Iraqis had demanded. In public, Iraqis said merely that they were studying the document.

Over all, however, there was a new tone of optimism. "The atmosphere is positive with the American attempt to preserve the sovereignty of the Iraqi nation," the government's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told the news channel Al-Arabiya. He praised the inclusion of a new provision stating that Americans would not launch attacks on Iraq's neighbors from Iraqi soil.