Washington - Iraq's proposal to hold a referendum next year on a security agreement with the United States does not mean implementation of the deal will be delayed, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
The Iraqi parliament is poised to approve the security agreement but have attacked plans to hold the national referendum in July. The UN mandate for the presence of US troops expires at the end of this year, but Rice said the pact allows the US military to stay in the interim.
Bucharest - Romania is ready to leave its 498 soldiers in Iraq if the Iraqi government asks them to stay, Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu was quoted Wednesday as saying.
Baghdad - The Iraqi parliament is expected to pass on Wednesday a security agreement with the US that would decide the future of 150,000 US troops in the country despite the challenge from anti-US Shiites group opposing the deal.
The 275-member legislature is expected to vote by a show of hands on the wide-ranging accord, which would require US troops to withdraw from Iraqi cities by the end of June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011.
London, Nov. 26 : The British Ministry of Defence has revealed that the cost of the offensives in Iraq and Afghanistan has crossed 13 billion pounds in six years so far, and there is a need for more than 2.3 billion pounds to pay for the campaign in southern Helmand province this year.
According to The Times, most of the funds have come from Treasury contingency reserves, although the ministry has had to bear some of the financial burden from its own budget to share the costs of new armoured vehicles sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Washington, Nov. 26 : In May 2007, at the start of the troop "surge" that is credited with quelling much of the violence in Iraq, the U. S. Congress had established 18 benchmarks that it would use to determine whether America was succeeding there.
Now, a year and a half later, there is a mixed reaction to whether those benchmarks have been met.
Fox News quotes White House officials as saying that Iraq has met most of the goals, rendering the benchmarks irrelevant, but others say Iraq still has a lot of work to do.
Baghdad - Two blasts killed two and injured nine people on Thursday in differe
Washington - Iraq's proposal to hold a referendum next year on a security agreement with the United States does not mean implementation of the deal will be delayed, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
Baghdad - The Iraqi parliament is expected to pass on Wednesday a security agreement with the US that would decide the future of 150,000 US troops in the country despite the challenge from anti-US Shiites group opposing the deal.
London, Nov. 26 : The British Ministry of Defence has revealed that the cost of the offensives in Iraq and Afghanistan has crossed 13 billion pounds in six years so far, and there is a need for more than 2.3 billion pounds to pay for the campaign in southern Helmand province this year.
Washington, Nov. 26 : In May 2007, at the start of the troop "surge" that is credited with quelling much of the violence in Iraq, the U. S. Congress had established 18 benchmarks that it would use to determine whether America was succeeding there.
