By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The Bush administration will not tie the hands of the next U.S. president with a planned agreement on future relations with Iraq and such a pact will not set U.S. troop levels, the State Department said on Thursday. State Department spokesman Tom Casey was responding to concerns expressed by U.S. lawmakers and presidential candidates that the deal to be negotiated might lock in a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq before the next White House occupant is elected on Nov. 4. "If anybody is worried that this agreement somehow ties the hands of future policy-makers, it's just simply not true," Casey told reporters in a regular briefing. "It's a basic framework agreement for normalizing the relationship," Casey said. "It's not something that establishes force levels, either minimum or maximum, or determines specific operations. Those are obviously things that are determined by the military commanders, and ultimately by the president." There are 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq seeking to maintain security nearly five years after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and ultimately led to a brutal insurgency. Casey said the accord would be along the lines of a "status of forces" agreement, which the United States has with many countries, setting out the legal framework for matters such as whether U.S. soldiers can be put on trial by host governments. The State Department is expected to take the lead in the talks, which have not begun. The White House announced in November that the United States and Iraq had agreed to start formal negotiations about their future relationship, with the goal of finishing an accord by the end of July. At that time, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the White House deputy national security adviser, said that while it was too soon to say what the size and shape of the long-term U.S. presence in Iraq would be, that was a "key matter for negotiation." Since then, leading Democratic presidential contenders have accused the Bush administration of trying to "bind" future governments to the president's Iraq policy. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, in a tight race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, has introduced legislation requiring Bush to seek congressional approval for security agreements with Iraq. On Capitol Hill on Thursday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, complained to reporters that "nobody knows what the administration is talking about" with the planned bilateral accord with Iraq. Biden, who withdrew from the Democratic presidential race this month, said last year the administration had made it sound like it was planning a long-term security agreement with Iraq -- a deal he said would require Senate approval. But Biden said that if a status of forces agreement was contemplated, that was different. He said he had written to the administration to ask about its plans and would withhold judgment until he found out. Meanwhile, he said, he did not intend to take up Clinton's legislation in his committee, effectively putting it on hold. (Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
Demonstrators shout slogans in Medellin during a protest against the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Colombia January 23, 2008. Rice will lead a group of U.S. lawmakers ...
