BAGHDAD — For the first time since his government approved a three-year security agreement with the United States, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki publicly defended the pact in a televised address on Tuesday night, reassuring Iraqis that representatives from all sects had been involved in the negotiating process and that the agreement was the best option available for Iraq.
The 12-minute speech came six days before Parliament is scheduled to vote on the agreement, which governs the presence of American troops in Iraq for the next three years.
In a separate action on Tuesday, the Iraqi cabinet announced that it had set a firm date, Jan. 31, for elections in all provinces except the three that make up Kurdistan and the province of Tamim, which includes the ethnically charged city of Kirkuk.
In his address, Mr. Maliki acknowledged that the negotiations were difficult, but said there were few alternatives to the current pact. “I’d like to say candidly we have our own assessments, but at the same time this is a strong beginning to get back the full sovereignty of Iraq in three years,” he said.
He described the contents of the agreement in broad terms and said, “no detainees anymore, no detention centers anymore, or American prisons for Iraqis, no searches or raids of buildings or houses, until there is an Iraqi judicial warrant and it is fully coordinated with the Iraqi government.”
Mr. Maliki also attacked opponents of the pact for suggesting over the past few days that the bargaining had gone on in secret, apparently a response to politicians who said they were surprised by the contents of the agreement.
“I feel sad that the opponents or even those who agreed with the pact released statements that are far away from reality,” he said.
In a culture deeply imbued with conspiracy, Mr. Maliki repeatedly vowed that there were no secret side agreements to the pact, the text of which was published in local newspapers on Tuesday.
Supporters of the agreement, including most Shiite and Kurdish legislators, are in a delicate position. While they say that they have the majority needed to succeed in Parliament, a simple mathematical victory is not enough; all acknowledge the need for widespread support.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, who has advocated national unity consistently since the 2003 invasion, reiterated his insistence that the agreement draw support across sectarian lines.
“Any agreement that doesn’t win national consensus,” the statement read, “will not be acceptable and will be a reason for more suffering for Iraqis.” Shiite lawmakers said that the ayatollah told them on Saturday that he found the final draft of the pact satisfactory, if not ideal, but that his condition of national consent must be met.
Addressing these concerns, Mr. Maliki argued that “the consensus vote in the cabinet on the withdrawal of the forces represents a unified voice.”
The main opposition is coming from followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who has rejected any agreement with the Americans in principle, and many Sunni politicians, who, while they are open to supporting the deal, are wary of the Shiite-led Iraqi government.
Though Sunni lawmakers are aware that Parliament has no ability to make changes to the agreement, they are seeking certain guarantees before giving their approval. These guarantees, they said, could appear in an appendix to the pact or as supplementary legislation.
Sunni lawmakers spent the day drawing up a list of demands that they intended to hand over to the Americans and the Iraqi government. Some of the demands are specific, like amnesty for the majority of the 16,000 Sunni detainees in the custody of the Americans. Others are more general, like the concern that Sunni groups will be unfairly singled out as targets by the Iraqi and American security forces.
Sunni lawmakers said they had been meeting with Americans, including the ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, to air their concerns, but added that the Americans had only listened and not responded in any specific way. The Sunnis said that they did want some sort of framework in place after Dec. 31, the expiration date for the United Nations resolution currently governing coalition forces. But they said there could be alternatives to this pact, including an extension of the resolution.
However, a senior American official in Baghdad said that the Iraqi government had “formally and categorically rejected” an extension of the resolution.
“We want to reach a solution,” Alaa Maki, a senior leader in a Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said in an interview at his office on Tuesday. “We don’t want to just put obstacles in front of Iraqi progress. But we want things to be put in the right way, so that we build on the right foundation.
“We regard this as the most important issue from 2003 until now,” he added, “because it will put the Iraqi future on paper.”
