The Iraqi Foreign Ministry has announced that Iraq and the U.S. had decided to complete the negotiations over the long-term security agreement between them by the end of July, in order to prevent the creation of a legal vacuum with the end of the U.N. Security Council mandate for the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.

The announcement following the meeting of Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi Sadrist MP said that the U.S.'s decision to withdraw 30,000 of its troops from Iraq by July 2008 came following wide-scale pressure from Iraqi national forces and from the American street.

Source: Aswataliraq.info, June 17, 2008; Al-Quds Al-Arabi, London, June 19, 2008