Here is the ABC News version: "Obama said Zebari told him the Iraqi government is deeply interested in negotiating an effective Status of Forces Agreement and a Strategic Framework Agreement with the United States, agreements that would hammer out rules for US troop operations in Iraq."

ABC News then quotes Obama as telling Zebari that "any negotiations for a Status of Forces Agreement or SFA should be done in the open and with Congress authorisation".

In other words, Obama was, in effect, telling a foreign official that the present US administration had no authority to conclude agreements with Iraq.

On his websites, Obama confirmed my account: "The Bush administration must submit the agreement to Congress or allow the next administration to negotiate an agreement which has bipartisan support..." Note that he was talking of one agreement, abandoning the attempt at separating SOFA from SFA and claiming that I, Zebari and everyone else had been confused.

Here is how the New York Times reported a press conference by Zebari on 3 July 2008: "Mr Zebari said that on his recent trip to the United States, in addition to President Bush, he met with the presumptive presidential nominees, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat. He said that Mr Obama asked him: ‘Why is the Iraqi government in a rush, in a hurry? This administration has only a few months in office.' Mr Zebari said he told Obama that even a Democratic administration would be better off having something concrete in front of them to take a hard look at. Mr Zebari also indicated that even a future agreement would be short. ‘We are not talking about 50 years, 25 years or 10 years; we are negotiating about one or two years, so this is not going to be another colonisation of Iraq'." Note that Zebari was talking of the short-term agreement, the one dealing with the rules governing the presence of US troops and the timetable for their withdrawal.