In Trump meeting, Iraq PM says US troops to withdraw by Sept. 30
The White House appeared to support a deadline to remove remaining American counter-ISIS troops from Iraq, but security concerns among Washington's Kurdish partners and US business firms remain.
WASHINGTON — The few hundred US military advisers remaining in Iraq in the aftermath of the war against the Islamic State group will depart the country by Sept. 30, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi said before the cameras following a closed-door meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
“I told his excellency, the president, that on the 30th of September, the US forces will be out of Iraq,” Zaidi said alongside Trump in the Oval Office.
The Iraqi premier, who is on his first foreign visit since assuming office in May, added that bilateral ties between the US and Baghdad will heretofore be defined by economic cooperation rather than “military relations.”
Trump emphasized commercial and energy ties with Iraq over military ones.
