Gates backs pact for troops in Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates supports a draft deal with Iraq that would provide a new legal basis to keep American forces there after a U.N. mandate expires on December 31, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

"He is comfortable with the document," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, noting that Gates began calling members of the U.S. Congress on Thursday in support of the deal.

After months of talks, U.S. and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday they had reached agreement on a pact that would require U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq by 2011.

The Bush administration has long opposed a timetable for U.S. withdrawals from Iraq and Morrell insisted that the targets in the deal would be met only if conditions permitted.

"These are not ad hoc, willy-nilly, arbitrary timelines," Morrell told reporters. "These are goals that ... will only be followed if the conditions on the ground provide for it."

One major sticking point in the negotiations was whether U.S. troops could be prosecuted under Iraqi law.

Iraq said on Wednesday it had secured the right to prosecute U.S. troops in certain circumstances. But the agreement appears to contain many caveats that mean U.S. forces would be subject to Iraqi justice only in very rare cases.

Iraq's government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Baghdad could prosecute U.S. troops if they committed a crime while off duty and outside U.S. bases -- and if a joint U.S.-Iraqi committee agreed.

U.S. troops are not allowed to leave bases in Iraq while off duty and doing so would be highly dangerous in a war zone.

"I don't think the secretary would be making phone calls in support of the document if he didn't believe it adequately protected our forces in Iraq in really all facets of their operations there, from combat to legal protections," Morrell said.

He declined to discuss the draft agreement in detail and stressed that it was not a final document.

Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the senior Republican on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, received a telephone briefing from Gates on Thursday, with additional information to be provided on Friday, according to an aide.

"From the initial details we received, the agreement appears to provide enough flexibility to allow the U.S. to continue operations against al Qaeda and stand up the Iraqi Security Forces," Hunter said.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan and Richard Cowan; Editing by John O'Callaghan)