Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq is a victory for the Middle Eastern nation. 

“The completion of foreign forces’ withdrawal from all Iraqi territories according to the agreed timetable between Iraq and the U.S. is a historical triumph for negotiations,” Maliki said on Thursday.

There are currently about 39,000 U.S. troopers in Iraq. Under a 2008 bilateral security accord, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), all the troops are required to leave by December 31. 

“We adopted negotiations at a hard and sensitive stage of Iraq’s modern history to deal with the presence of foreign forces in Iraqi,” Maliki announced during a ceremony held in Baghdad, alsumaria.tv reported.

The prime minister also called on other countries, especially neighbors, to establish good relations with Iraq.

“We are ready to cooperate with neighboring countries and we call them to establish the best bilateral relations based on good neighboring and mutual respect,” Maliki added. 

“All political parties, religious scholars, tribal sheiks, intellectuals, artists, media people and civil society organizations must show support to security forces at this delicate stage of Iraq’s history,” Maliki advised. 

“It is necessary that Iraqis preserve this national accomplishment through unity and that they reject disagreements to maintain Iraq’s peace, unity and integrity,” he concluded. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Friday it had handed over Camp Victory, a sprawling base at the edge of Baghdad that used to be the headquarters for the U.S. military, to the Iraqi government, AP reported.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Barry Johnson said Victory Base Complex — as it's formally called by the U.S. military — was formally signed over on Friday morning and is now under the “full authority” of the Iraqi government.

Camp Victory has served as the headquarters for the U.S. military and home to the military's commanding general.

Some parts of the compound are already being used by the Iraqi military, but the government is still deciding what to do with the prime real estate like the palaces used by the U.S. military.

On Wednesday, thousands of Iraqis rallied in the capital Baghdad and the southern cities of Najaf and Basra to condemn an unannounced visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Press TV reported.

Biden held meetings with top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad.

Chanting "Biden get out of Iraq" and 'No to America,' they described the trip as a last-ditch effort by Washington to convince Iraqi leaders to keep a number of U.S. troops in the country beyond a previously-agreed 2011 deadline.

Baghdad has refused to grant legal immunity to the U.S. forces, who could remain beyond the deadline.

The demonstrators in Sadr City, east of Baghdad, accused Biden of seeking to create division among the political ranks in the country. They called for an immediate U.S. withdrawal and an end to Washington's meddling in the country.

Iraqi lawmakers, clerics, and city councilors also attended the protest rally.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent occupation, the Arab nation has lost over one million people to the resulting violence, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.