Baghdad - in the Monday morning, the Iraqi Foreign Minister State in a marble Rotunda of Saddam Hussein's old Republican Palace, once the heart of the American occupation, and noted that this where the United States sway held, if it "tried to run us our country help."
How do you go? "Bad", he said.
Soon, the Palace will be the setting for a Summit of the Arab League - a showpiece for a country, once a regional pariah who is now trying, on the stage of Middle East Affairs at the same time assert himself when his neighbors in turmoil.
"It is very important due to the recent changes and historical developments in other Arab countries," said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. "We are ready, Baghdad is prepared to receive all the Arab President."
The Palace, where a Turkish company has worked around the clock since August, the American's position to crush and to restore standards of the large Arab capital, talks to Iraqi longing the burden of war and the occupation and achieve a certain national self-confidence.
The revelation improvements on Monday, in a tour of the Foreign Ministry, was the Palace also other symbol of the waning influence of the United States here, as well as decisions on the future relationship between the two countries, both diplomatically and militarily, hangs in the balance.
The sandbags that left the Americans at the Palace have disappeared, but a sign reading "US Embassy motor pool" still hanging on the wall outside a rear entrance. It was to fix little structural damage.
"it it bomb not because she knew that they were going, here to stay", Almanhal H. Sigma Draconis, the chief Protocol Officer for the Foreign Ministry said.
This should be the last months for American forces in the Iraq. President Obama said in January during his State of the Union address. He has it again in his speech to Libya last month, said America's military "Iraq his people was left." But as much else, that has taken place here in the last eight years nothing is that simple.
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates last week visited and raised an issue which talks between journalists and diplomats in the streets of Sadr City, on the ethnic fault line in the North, where Arabs and Kurds to land and oil compete, and in the background, but only rarely in public by the US authorities:, that some troops might be after this year here because it needs to protect of its borders and airspace Iraq.
On Saturday, the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad in 2003, the streets filled with angry were protesters against America's continued military presence and warning of more violence if troops this year remained. Every day the Iraqi press is filled with speculation and rumors about, whether the Americans to stay or go.
But there is no serious discussions between the two Governments to extend the time frame.
"It has no request from the Iraqi side, nor there were discussions of the Iraqi side," said James F. Jeffrey, the US Ambassador to Iraq recently.
The State Department has double its size plans here in preparation for the planned military withdrawal worked. You intended many of them private contractors from 8,000 civilians to more than 16,000, expand Congress but not yet approved to pay the money for it.
Iraq is itself in the negotiations on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs role claim. It has two consulates in the United States its Embassy in Washington called - it already has in Detroit and another in California - in exchange for allowing plans the United States establish temporary branch offices in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.
Blood spent for all American and treasure, here there are remarkably few visible remnants. The United States is only in quickly flashes an armored convoys or by the worn edges of some American novels on the bookseller market on Mutanabbi Street volatile. The number of the American media with offices here is also to a handful.
Turkey and the Iran new relations here have of America's war, diplomatic and political forged. Mr Zebari accompanied a Turkish Executive whose undertaking renovated the Palace on the tour of the building. At the hotel Rashid, always a major face lift for the Summit scheduled for May 10 and 11 and a station in the Federal Foreign Office tour on Monday was a British Executive of the main renovation company, which in addition to Mr Zebari were. Chinese State television set up recently an Office in Baghdad.
Some American companies are here to Iraq's potential prey, mainly due to security concerns. During violence strongly decreased travel the diplomats and the few American executives here in armored vehicles and wear flak vests.
Last week ate a group of American finance executives, including some of the Citibank in the hope, called open a branch office, omelets in an American-style diner DoJos in the heavily protected green zone. A man said he made good money keeping Iraqi government debt from the time of the sectarian civil war, but it was his first time in Baghdad and he lived for less than 48 hours. The Group was to be moved in armored vehicles and was guarded by burly security men with earpieces.
Many of the former Westernized exiles who came back in the Iraq in the year 2003 with the Americans have since divorced. Tamara Daghistani, a former exile who teaches Kuwait, the Americans before the invasion of Iraqi culture, including the first American administrator, Jay Garner, chastises now the Americans, "the green zone leave not."
"If you here to help out and do it," she said.
A radiant blue sky of Mr. Zebari called "a symbol of Iraqi sovereignty." Meanwhile, in the Palace, that that Arab leaders will gather great Hall, where he says,
"There were some people who said we were not prepared by Parliament and others who said we have this event could not here," he said. "We want to show them not, we are ready for you."
Question of the future relations with the United States, saying this was a discussion for another day.
"It is still a great debate going," he said.
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