Iraq PM sees U.S. troops withdrawal by 2011

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"There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil," Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

"An open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces," he said.

Maliki's remarks were the most explicit statement yet that the increasingly assertive Iraqi government expects the U.S. presence to end in three years as part of a deal between Washington and Baghdad to allow them to stay beyond this year.

Previously, Iraqi officials have said they want U.S. troops to end patrols of Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year and combat troops to leave Iraq by 2011, but Washington has been reluctant to embrace a firm deadline for all troops to go.

A bilateral pact is needed to replace a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, which has formed the legal basis for the American troop presence ever since but expires at the end of this year.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said a draft agreement had been prepared but it needed to "go through a number of levers in the Iraqi political system before we actually have an agreement from the Iraqi side."

"Until we have a deal, we don't have a deal," he said. U.S. officials declined to comment on Maliki's 2011 withdrawal date.

Maliki's Shi'ite-led government has been increasingly assertive in pushing for a deadline for the roughly 144,000 U.S. troops to leave Iraq, especially since an Iraqi-led crackdown on Shi'ite militias this year proved a success.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on a visit to Baghdad last week that a deal was close, but not yet final.

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