U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Baghdad in a surprise visit on Thursday, al-Hurrah satellite channel reported.
Rice is expected to meet with Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and U.S. officials in Iraq amid news that U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have finished work on a draft security agreement that would decide the status of the U.S. troops in Iraq.
Iraqi officials said anonymously that negotiators had completed latest draft of the deal last week and sent it to the U.S. and Iraqi governments, Media reports said late Wednesday.
They said that the draft calls for U.S. troops to fully leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
The two countries were involved in negotiations since March but failed to meet their July 31 deadline of the security deal which will set a framework for the U.S. troops' presence in Iraq after 2008.
Earlier, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad clarified that the United States and Iraq are working on two kinds of agreements: one is the Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) and the other is Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).
Source:Xinhua
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