The Iraqi parliament yesterday rejected a draft law which stated that all
foreign troops except for the United States to withdraw from Iraq by mid next
year, lawmakers said.
"The draft law has been rejected by the majority of the lawmakers in today's
session," said Nassir al-Isawi, a member of parliamentary bloc loyal to
firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The lawmakers' rejection came after the first reading for a draft bill
approved on Tuesday by the Iraqi cabinet, Isawi said.
Hussein al-Falluji, another lawmaker from the Iraqi Accordance Front said
that "such relations between countries should be organized according to
international law and through agreements, not by a law."
The cabinet bill sets a timetable for withdrawal of non-US foreign troops
from Iraq by five months for combat troops starting from January and seven
months for the rest of them.
The cabinet draft was mainly to affect the roughly 4,000 British troops in
southern Iraq.
However, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his visiting British
counterpart Gordon Brown said in Baghdad Wednesday that the British troops would
end its mission in Iraq in the first half of next year.