Baghdad ? Iraq’s Cabinet on Sunday approved a security pact that sets a timetable for the nearly complete withdrawal of American forces within three years, but the agreement faces an uncertain outlook in Iraq’s parliament.

The largest Sunni party in Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party, wants the agreement to go to a nationwide referendum. Its affiliated parties complain that their efforts to amend the plan to require the release of detainees and to provide compensation for war victims were ignored by lawmakers who shaped the pact.

Followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, view the agreement as an affirmation of the American occupation and oppose it outright.

Their dissent colors broad political momentum Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki built through the weekend after he reportedly gained new concessions from the American government. It won support from 27 of the 28 Cabinet members. Nine members did not vote because they were traveling, a Cabinet minister said.

Al-Maliki declared his support for the agreement Friday, and helped persuade Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to give it the green light on Saturday. Al-Sistani is Iraq’s leading religious authority and does not share al-Sadr’s view of the security agreement.

Representatives of al-Maliki’s Dawa party framed the deal as a means to end America’s occupation of Iraq while phasing out the assistance coalition forces provide.

It strengthens Iraqi controls over U.S. forces by:

¢ Requiring the U.S. to get Iraqi consent before searching homes.

¢ Giving Iraqis authority over the international zone that houses the centers of American power in Baghdad.

¢ Enabling Iraqis to search U.S. cargo.

¢ Prohibiting Americans from conducting raids in other countries from Iraqi soil.

¢ Eliminating the judicial immunity that applies to foreign contractors and U.S. soldiers working in Iraq under the occupation’s current mandate.

If it passes parliament, the agreement would replace a United Nations mandate that allows American forces to operate in Iraq. That mandate expires Dec. 31.

Several Iraqi officials said they were assured that President-elect Barack Obama would honor the agreement. During his campaign, Obama pledged to reduce the U.S. presence in Iraq over his first 16 months in office, removing them by the summer of 2010.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said it would take a year for either side to cancel the agreement because of the logistics of a withdrawal.

Al-Maliki’s delegates stressed that the agreement leaves no room to extend the American presence in Iraq beyond Dec. 31, 2011. It calls on American units to pull out of Iraqi cities by June 2009.