The United States is to deploy 21,000 US troops in and around the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq despite the security agreement between Baghdad and Washington.
According to the commander of US forces in northern Iraq, Anthony Cucolo, 21,000 US forces will be deployed in Kirkuk and Mosul early next month, the Fars News Agency reported on Saturday.
Cucolo further claimed that the deployment is aimed at preventing what he called the possible Kurd-Arab tension.
Cucolo’s remarks come as a surprise as there has been no Kurd-Arab tensions since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
The move is contrary to a security pact, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which was signed on November 17, 2008 by the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and the then US ambassador Ryan Crocker.
Based on the agreement, both sides agreed that US troops should pull out from Iraq’s urban areas by the end of June 2009 and be withdrawn altogether from the country by the end of 2011.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the
copyright owner.
