Did Obama try to scotch an Iraqi-US agreement on military forces?

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Amir Taheri accuses Barack Obama of interfering in the attempt to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement with Iraq while making his trip to Baghdad in July. In his New York Post column, Taheri quotes the Iraqi Foreign Minister, on the record, telling him that Obama tried to convince the Iraqis to end the negotiations and instead ask the UN for another one-year extension to the current mandate. That would have left US troops in current position for another year, but more importantly, would have provided the US a diplomatic setback that Obama could have exploited on the campaign trail:

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.