Canadian Armed Forces Station in Afghanistan

On the second day of a two-day visit to Iran, Al-Malik was quoted as saying on June 8 that he "will not allow Iraq to become a platform for harming the security of Iran and neighbors."

After talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki late on June 7, Iran's state-controlled media quoted al-Maliki as saying his government placed great value on Iran's security. State broadcaster IRIB said on its website that al-Maliki also met Iran's Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseini Ejehi.

Iran opposes the negotiations going on between Baghdad and Washington, which are aimed at regulating the presence of American forces in the country after their United Nations' mandate expires at the end of 2008. Iran says it will lead to permanent U.S. bases on its doorstep in Iraq.

Iran's concerns come amid renewed international tensions over its nuclear program, which the United States fears is aimed at making atomic weapons, a charge Tehran rejects.

The Iraqi and Iranian sides were also due to discuss alleged Iranian interference in Iraq, including Tehran's support for Shi’ite militias, who have fought bitter battles with U.S. and Iraqi government forces earlier this year.

The U.S. allegations were reinforced on June 8 when the military announced the arrest in Baghdad of an Iraqi arms dealer and "assassination squad" leader responsible for trafficking Shi’ite militants in and out of Iran for training.

The visit to Iran is the second this year by al-Maliki, who is also a Shi’ite political leader, while Ahmadinejad made a landmark visit to Iraq three months ago.

During the Saddam Hussein era, Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war that killed some 1 million people. But after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam's regime, Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government brought improved ties with Tehran.

Compiled from agency reports

RFE/RL correspondent Heather Maher asked Middle East expert and former National Security Council adviser Steven Simon, of the Council on Foreign Relations, to explain the controversy and predict what will happen.

RFE/RL: Could you explain why a U.S.-Iraq security pact is needed?

Steve Simon: There are two agreements in the works. One is a "status-of-forces agreement," which is necessary because if you’ve got your military forces in another country, their presence there needs to be regulated. Because, young men, all in uniform, carrying guns, and having the run of the place can make trouble.

You know, I say this in a very jocular way, but it actually becomes a very serious issue. And if your troops are going to make trouble, there needs to be some prior agreement with the host country as to how that trouble gets resolved. Who has judicial responsibility when there’s a problem? And these things need to be negotiated, and the results of the negotiation codified in a "status-of-forces" agreement.

RFE/RL: And the other agreement the United States is seeking with Iraq?

Simon: The other agreement is meant to give shape and content to the future of the U.S.-Iraqi relationship across a range of topic areas, from the economy to security. And on security, there are some provisions in the agreement that are a bit vexing both to Iraqis and to some Americans.

Tremendous Sensitivity

RFE/RL: Last week thousands of followers of the Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr protested the idea of a joint U.S.-Iraqi agreement, shouting things like, “No to the occupation!” Sunnis also oppose the deal, saying it will compromise national sovereignty and “Iraqi interests.” Members of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government have called for major changes to the draft agreements. What is their opposition based on?

Simon: Well, there’s a history here. Because of their experience with the British, who at one time occupied Iraq -- in fact, they did for many years, on and off -- there’s a tremendous sensitivity among Iraqis about being under foreign domination. And certainly since 1958, they’ve considered themselves to be completely independent of foreign rule. And the way in which the United States has gone about pursuing an agreement, which many believe is meant to pave the way for a long-term military presence, has reminded Iraqis, rather unpleasantly, of their experience with the British.

So, in a nutshell, an agreement of the sort the U.S. seems to be seeking right now is bringing to the surface Iraqi fears of a long-term foreign domination, and they just don’t like that.

RFE/RL: It’s been reported that U.S. negotiators have certain demands that they are trying to put in the final agreement. Among the most controversial are granting U.S. forces the ability to arrest and detain Iraqis and to enjoy immunity from Iraqi laws. Then there’s the issue of military bases. The lead State Department negotiator, David Satterfield, told Al-Jazeera that the United States rejects the idea of "permanent bases." But to many Iraqis, long-term lease agreements are the same thing as permament occupation. How is the United States going to get Iraq to sign off on this?

Simon: Look, I am hard-pressed to see this flying with Iraqis. You know, if an American rapes an Iraqi woman, and the U.S. says, "Well, we have a status-of-forces agreement that says we will take care of this problem and it’s none of Iraq’s business," popular feeling in Iraq will be aroused. I think there will be some serious anger. And I think Iraqi authorities who are negotiating these agreements are very aware of these pitfalls. The long-term leases [are] just right out of the British book, and I think that that’s going to rub a lot of Iraqis seriously the wrong way.

But there’s another side to this, too, which is how well this agreement is going to fly on the U.S. side, in terms of American domestic politics. Because one of the agreements, in its current draft, offers U.S. security assurances to Iraq. And, you know, American lawmakers who will have to approve this agreement -- if the final version contains phrases like that -- are going to look askance at those sorts of assurances. They’re going to say, "Why should we do this?" And they’re going to ask certain questions, like "What is the Iraqi government’s relationship to Iran?" and "What’s the nature of Iran’s influence in Iraq? How do the Iraqis view Israel? Do they view Israel as an enemy?"

And, depending on the answers to those questions, American legislators are going to say: "Well, no. This is not a state that the United States ought to be promising help for, in some kind of contingency."

Treaty Arrangement

RFE/RL: Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has said that any agreement must be approved by the Iraqi parliament. But isn't the White House arguing that these are administrative agreements, which don’t need the approval of the Iraqi parliament -- or the U.S. Congress, for that matter?

Simon: That absolutely is what the White House is saying. And I strongly doubt that the agreement in its current form will be viewed, certainly on the American side, as something that can be negotiated solely as a matter of administrative arrangements, between two governments. I think they’re going to look at the current document very much as a treaty arrangement. And in my experience, when you have draft agreements that offer security assurances, then that agreement crosses a threshold in American law, under which the agreement is required to be submitted to Congress for approval.

So I think the [Bush] administration is certainly very eager to cast it as an administrative agreement so as to keep it out of public view and keep it away from Congress. But I don’t think that Congress -- especially a Democratic Congress -- is going to take very kindly to that.

RFE/RL: The United States initially said it wanted to have an agreement by July, but that seems impossible, given the opposition that has sprung up. The U.S. election on November 4 will bring in a new president, and then the UN mandate expires on December 31. Considering these time pressures, what do you see happening in the next few months with the negotiations?

Simon: I think the way the parties will try and get around this is either to have the UN mandate extended, or put together a skeletal agreement that is cast as an interim arrangement that will buy time and form a bridge between whatever the current arrangement is and whatever the next arrangement might be. So there are two work-arounds, and I suspect that one or the other will be employed.

The visit is Kouchners second trip to Iraq in less than a year. It comes as France prepares to assume the rotating EU presidency in July.

The French foreign minister said his visit was a "message of peace and cooperation" and a chance to discuss any future French contribution to rebuilding Iraq.

Kouchner arrived in the southern city of Nasiriyah from Jordan, where he announced France will try to take in about 500 Iraqi Christian refugees "because of the oppression of some Christians in Iraq."

Speaking to reporters while touring the ancient ruins of the biblical city of Ur with Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and the governor of Dhi Qar Governorate, Aziz Kadhim Alwan, Kouchner said four Iraqi children would travel to France to undergo cardiac surgeries.

The French Foreign Ministry said Kouchner is scheduled to hold meetings with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani, and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari during his two-day visit. Kouchner was also due to meet religious and civic leaders, and visit the Kurdish northern city of Arbil, where he would inaugurate a new French embassy office.

During his previous visit to Iraq in summer 2007, Kouchner said France, which had been one of the fiercest critics of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, wanted to "turn the page" and look to the future.

Nasiriyah, about 320 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, has recently been the scene of clashes between Shi'ite militias and U.S.-Iraqi forces. The situation has calmed since anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr declared a truce, but sporadic violence continues.

The U.S. military said the Imam Ali base where Kouchner landed was hit by rockets or mortar shells late on May 30, but no casualties were reported.

With material from agency reports

Those ideals are the rights of all human beings to hold opinions and to express them without fear of arbitrary arrest and persecution by their governments.

And, as Amnesty International uses its 2008 annual survey of human rights conditions to remind the world, these ideals are nothing new. In fact, they are part of an international agreement that all the nations of the world formally subscribe to and which is now 60 years old.

The framework is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. At the time of its adoption, world leaders enthusiastically welcomed what is, in fact, a point-by-point listing of the basic rights of every human being.

'Magna Carta' For All

“This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere,” Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, said at the time of the declaration's adoption.

But Amnesty International says many authoritarian regimes today remain far from accepting any kind of Magna Carta concept. The Magna Carta was a famous agreement in 13th-century England that forced the king to recognize that he, too, must obey the laws.

Instead, Amnesty notes in its current report, people are still being imprisoned by regimes that routinely ignore both their own laws and their international commitments as they repress free speech and political activity. And in 2007 -- the year covered in the report -- there was plenty of evidence of that -- from Russia to Central Asia to Iran.

“This is the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," says Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan. "It is about time that governments apologized for six decades of human rights failures, and it’s about time that they committed themselves afresh to living up to the promises that they made in 1948.”

She also says that events in 2007 showed that the people who live under repressive regimes know their rights and demand them. It is their governments which do not listen -- to their own shame.

“If I look back at 2007," Khan says, "what I remember most are the saffron-robed monks in Myanmar. What I remember most are the black-suited lawyers in Pakistan demanding justice, demanding equality, demanding the rule of law, demanding human rights. It was people on the streets that put governments to shame in 2007.”

Signers, But Still Abusers

Khan’s cry of anger against the status quo mirrors the frustration that many human rights campaigners feel as decades go by and the very governments that signed the Declaration of Human Rights continue to abuse it.

The frustration is voiced clearly when political dissidents and rights activists from different countries meet to discuss how to force governments to change. The head of one Western-based organization working in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union says it is not possible for civic groups alone to reform repressive regimes.

"I do think we overstate the civic society case," Bruce Jackson, president of the Project on Transitional Democracies, told the Democracy and Security Conferencea in Prague last year. "Civic society confirms democracy and might be a condition of democracy, but it does not cause democracy. There are more NGOs in Belarus today than there are in Georgia, and in fact if NGOs alone can cause democracy, then Alyaksandr Milinkevich would be president of a free Belarus."

He and many other rights activists would like to see Western governments use their economic weight to force abusive regimes to change as the price for better trade relations. Western states routinely isolate smaller, repressive regimes that like that of Sudan or Myanmar but -- rights activists argue -- go slow when it comes to major trading partners like Russia and China.

'Top Of The Agenda'

“This duality has existed practically all the time. It never stopped," former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky said at the same Prague conference. "The question is about the proportion -- whether the main emphasis in your relations with [repressive] countries is made on demanding that they improve their human rights record and release dissidents or whether that is the last point in all your relations. And the first point is, of course, how to have more profits. And that's what our struggle is about, how to make the question of human rights and the fate of dissidents the top of the agenda in international relations.”

That is essentially the message of Amnesty International this year as it calls on all governments -- both repressive and enlightened -- to renew their commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As the declaration says, all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. No one shall be subjected to torture. All are equal before the law.

Now, 60 years after these truths were universally adopted, Amnesty says, it is more than time they were universally observed.

After using the first day of his historic trip to Brussels to lay groundwork for enhanced trade and cooperation, al-Maliki turned his attention to security for talks with NATO's leadership.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance will consider the request, but added that NATO will not "replace" the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.

NATO is currently running a relatively modest training program for Iraqi Army and police officers. Individual NATO countries have also donated weapons and other equipment. NATO's low-key involvement in Iraq largely stems from the fact that France and Germany, among others, opposed the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

However, there are indications the alliance might be ready to extend its cooperation with Iraq.

Prime Minister al-Maliki emerged from a meeting with NATO ambassadors in Brussels on April 17 saying that, at least for the time being, his government's ambitions remain limited.

"We did not come here to request extra troops that would replace the Iraqi troops in confrontations against the challenges," al-Maliki said. "We came here to ask for more training and more equipment. The major security responsibility in Iraq will remain on the shoulders of the Iraqi troops."

But the Iraqi leader also noted that his country is at the forefront of a global battle with terrorism. In what some might read as a veiled criticism of NATO's contribution so far, he said Iraq feels "there should be more effort [and] more speed."

But al-Maliki said assistance provided by NATO had been "a major factor" in shaping the actions of the Iraqi army in the recent "crucial confrontations" in Al-Basrah, Baghdad, and elsewhere.

Secretary-General de Hoop Scheffer did not elucidate on the alliance's possible response to the Iraqi requests. He did say, however, that the all allies are committed to securing Iraq's stability and prosperity.

"It was crystal clear around the [North Atlantic Council] table this morning that all the NATO allies would like to see a stable, secure, and prosperous Iraq -- where we all have a lot at stake in the fight against those people who do not want only not to see stability and security in Iraq, but also would like to inflict damage on our societies," de Hoop Scheffer said.

De Hoop Scheffer said a NATO delegation will soon visit Baghdad to discuss Iraqi proposals for a new cooperation treaty between the two sides. NATO leaders agreed at their Bucharest summit on April 2-4 to develop a "structured cooperation framework" for Iraq.

The NATO chief also noted that the summit had extended the remit of the NATO training mission in Iraq until the end of 2009, and quoted a recent Italian contribution of police trainers as an example of the alliance's commitment to continue expanding it.

De Hoop Scheffer said NATO will not replace U.S. or other coalition troops in Iraq, but will provide assistance within the confines of its "toolbox" of experience and resources according to Iraq's requests and "what is feasible within the alliance."

The head of the EU's executive branch, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, suggested during a two-day visit to Brussels by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the framework energy agreement could be signed within weeks.

"Very soon, I hope, these [energy] negotiations are going to be concluded," Barroso told a joint press conference on April 16. "There are already very concrete details now on the table, and it is a matter of some weeks, I believe, to conclude these negotiations."

The accord could be signed in early May, when Iraqi Oil Minister Husayn al-Shahristani will attend a seminar in Brussels.

It is arguably a new dynamic in recent EU-Iraqi relations -- one highlighting what Iraq can do for the Europe as opposed to what Europe can do for Iraq.

One of the EU's primary immediate interests lies in tapping into Iraq's natural-gas reserves. Talks on a possible pipeline to carry gas across Turkey are at an advanced stage, and securing a deal with Iraq could boost the EU's tottering Nabucco pipeline project, intended to provide the bloc with a direct link to Turkey and the gas-rich countries around the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Some of the EU's hopes for Iraq have been held up by the Iraqi leadership's inability to enact an oil and gas law, which could go some way to reassure would-be foreign investors. The law is also expected to help reconcile the interests of Iraq's Kurdish region -- which commands vast reserves of oil and gas and sits atop the export route to Turkey and Europe -- with the Shi'ite and Sunni communities.

In Brussels, al-Maliki told his EU hosts that Iraq's parliament is "close" to agreeing on a final version of the oil and gas law.

The EU and Iraq are also negotiating a trade and cooperation agreement, which should lay down basic guidelines for economic and political cooperation between the two sides. It remains unclear when that treaty might be signed.

Al-Maliki sought with mixed success to assure the EU that the Iraqi security situation is improving.

He told the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee that he is "more confident than at any time before" that Iraq's government is close to declaring a "final victory" over Al-Qaeda and its allies from the previous regime, various militias, and other criminal groups.

Asked when Iraq might be able to stand on its own two feet, al-Maliki offered seemingly contradictory messages.

He said that on the one hand, Iraq's army and other security forces are strong enough to control the security situation in all of Iraq's provinces. Al-Maliki called recent operations against militants in Baghdad, Al-Basrah, and the western Al-Anbar Governorate a "prelude" for a comprehensive drive against insurgents across the country.

On the other hand, al-Maliki said, the withdrawal of U.S. forces is not imminent, and said their departure must be "organized and programmed."

"Iraq, which has managed to set up its new security forces and armed forces, is today capable of fighting all the elements that fight it outside the law," he said. "This Iraq has an army and security forces and is capable of facing all threats. When [it is ready to do so in full], soon, the foreign forces will have to withdraw."

While the ranking members of the European Parliament's largest political factions gave al-Maliki a relatively easy ride, the frustration among rank-and-file deputies was palpable.

Marios Matsakis, a liberal Cypriot deputy, accused al-Maliki of embellishment or worse.

"Listening to you this morning describing the situation in your country, I thought you were talking about another country, not Iraq, because the reports we have daily from your country are completely different," Matsakis said. "In fact, there is violence, aggression, corruption, insecurity, terrorist activity, all continuing unabated. Your country is, in fact, in what I would consider to be a real mess."

Barroso, too, told reporters that the two men had a "very open exchange" -- frequently diplomatic code for divergent views -- on the current situation in Iraq. Barroso said he had "encouraged" al-Maliki to "continue working on several fronts to address the security situation -- strive to reduce violence, urge all Iraqi actors to work on national reconciliation, and establish a society based on the rule of law and respect for human rights."

The European Commission has pledged some $1 billion in aid to Iraq since 2003. There is growing concern within the EU that its money is being misspent or simply fails to make a difference as the security situation remains unpredictable.