The Two Faces Of Zebari?

There's conflicting information coming out about the negotiations between the White House and Iraq over a long-term agreement for troops to remain in the country. On the one hand, Agence France Presse reports a breakthrough in the talks.

The Iraqi foreign minister said on Tuesday that Washington has agreed to scrap immunity for foreign security guards in Iraq, moving the two countries closer to signing a long-term security pact.

"The immunity for private security guards has been removed. The US has agreed on it," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told AFP after briefing Iraqi MPs on the controversial US-Iraq security pact which is being negotiated.

This would seem to suggest that progress was being made in the talks. Providing immunity for contractors was among the key sticking points. And the WaPo article flat-out states that there's progress. However, a New York Times staffer attended the same press conference with the same Iraqi Foreign Minister and came up with a very different conclusion.

Declaring that there will not be “another colonization of Iraq,” Iraq’s foreign minister raised the possibility on Wednesday that a full security agreement with the United States might not be reached this year, and that if one was, it would be a short-term pact.

American officials, speaking anonymously because of the delicate state of negotiations, said they were no longer optimistic that a complete security agreement could be reached by the year’s end.

I mean, these stories are completely at odds with one another. What the hell is going on? You could say that there are a lot of negotiators, each with their own agendas, but both stories quote the SAME GUY. What's probably happening is that Zebari wanted to tout the concession over contractor immunity and pressure the US negotiators at the same time, holding out the possibility of signing an interim agreement or none at all. And both journalists went with different aspects of the press conference.

It does appear that the Iraqis have the upper hand in these negotiations, I'll say that.