The new government of Iraq has decided to postpone any demand for negotiations to establish a more formal legal basis for the presence of American and other foreign troops on its soil, Iraqi and American officials said this week.
Instead, these officials said, Iraq will allow the current United Nations mandate to remain in effect beyond a deadline next Thursday for a review of Security Council Resolution 1637, which provides legal authority for the American-led military coalition to continue its combat operations.
"I've just finished speaking with my foreign minister, who intends to be in New York for the review, and it will not be a point at which we terminate," Samir al-Sumaidaie, Iraq's new ambassador to the United States, said Friday. The new government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is the first full-term government to take power in Iraq since the American invasion more than three years ago.
Iraq has the right to unilaterally end the United Nations troops mandate at any time, as spelled out in the resolution approved unanimously by the Security Council last Nov. 8.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/middleeast/11troops.ready.html