Iran warned Iraq that an ‘intensely treacherous’ United States habitually broke pacts like one it recently concluded on American troops quitting Iraq by 2011. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued the warning to Iraq’s visiting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose country last year reached the agreement on the pullout of U.S. troops now numbering more than 140,000. Maliki met Khamenei in Tehran a few days after U.S. forces in Iraq came under an Iraqi mandate, a move Maliki says restored sovereignty nearly six years after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein. Khamenei “pointed at the American government’s mischief and efforts to consolidate its domination and plunder the resources of the country”, state television said. Commenting on the U.S.-Iraq security pact on U.S. forces, whose combat troops are due to pull out of towns by mid-2009, Khamenei added: “The Americans are intensely treacherous and break pacts to the extent that they do not have real friendship even with their close allies in the region.” Before his visit to Tehran, Maliki told Iranian state television his government would not allow Iraq to be used as a base to threaten its neighbours.
IRAN CALLS USA TREACHEROUS
Iran warned Iraq that an ‘intensely treacherous’ United States habitually broke pacts like one it recently concluded on American troops quitting Iraq by 2011. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued the warning to Iraq’s visiting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose country last year reached the agreement on the pullout of U.S.
