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Iraq Shi'ites hammer home autonomy demands

Posted on: Thursday, 11 August 2005, 05:55 CDT

By Khaled Farhan

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Shi'ite Islamist leaders hammered home demands for an autonomous federal state for their people across oil-rich southern Iraq on Thursday, four days before a deadline for agreeing a new constitution.

Minority Sunni Arab leaders, as well as a spokesman for the Shi'ite-led coalition government, rejected the idea and it was unclear whether the split would hold up delivery of a draft text that Washington hopes can help quell the Sunni insurgency.

At an impassioned mass rally in Najaf, heartland of Shi'ite Islam, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution Abdul Aziz al-Hakim turned up the pressure on his opponents from ethnic and religious minorities as the head of his party's military wing derided central government in Baghdad.

"Regarding federalism, we think that it is necessary to form one entire region in the south," said Hakim, leader of SCIRI, and a powerful force in the coalition that came to power in January's election, secured by U.S. military occupation.

Shi'ites account for about 60 percent of Iraq's people and the issue of autonomy raises major concerns for the country's ability to hold together and for the division of its oil wealth.

Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein, other minorities and secular Shi'ites wary of religious rule have been opposing the idea of a constitution that would allow southern Shi'ites the kind of autonomy now enjoyed de facto by Kurds in the north.

"Federalism has to be in all of Iraq. They are trying to prevent the Shi'ites from enjoying their own federalism," said Hadi al-Amery, head of the Badr movement, a militia organization formed by SCIRI when it was fighting Saddam from Iranian exile.

"What have we got from the central government but death?"

NEGOTIATING TACTIC?

Bahaa al-Araji, a leading Shi'ite on the committee writing the constitution, said disputes over regional autonomy were key.

He rejected Hakim's project as sectarian and divisive. The proposal may partly be a negotiating tactic, however. The Kurds, Araji said, are resisting efforts to curb the autonomy of regions -- of which Kurdistan is so far the only one.

"If there were Shi'ite and Sunni regions it would simply entrench sectarianism and destroy the unity of Iraq," Araji told Reuters. "We have 16 points of dispute, the most important of which is federalism. If we can deal with that ... we should finish in the next few days so the draft will be ready on time."

SCIRI, long close to Shi'ite Iran, inspires strong emotions among Iraqis. Opponents accuse it and the Badr movement of fomenting religious vigilantism, charges they deny. Hakim again pressed for Islam to be "the main source" of law in the new Iraq, a proposal that alarms some women and minority groups.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, closely involved behind the scenes in a project Washington sees as vital to its interests in stabilizing Iraq, has made clear he will not tolerate the kind of Islamic rule practiced by America's regional foes in Tehran.

Hakim's rousing calls were greeted with wild enthusiasm by tens of thousands of supporters crying "Yes, yes to Islam!," "Yes, yes to Hakim!" among other slogans. The meeting was called to commemorate the assassination two years ago by a huge car bomb in Najaf of Hakim's brother, the former SCIRI leader.

But in Baghdad, Laith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shi'ite Islamist from SCIRI rival Dawa, said: "The idea of a Shi'ite region ... is unacceptable to us."

SUNNI RESISTANCE

Saleh al-Mutlak, a leading Sunni Arab politician, told Reuters: "We hoped this day would never come. We believe that the Arabs, whether Sunni or Shi'ite, are one. We totally reject any attempt to stir up sectarian issues to divide Iraq."

Hakim and Amery made clear their demands, which have rarely been so vocally expressed, went beyond a project floated in the southern second city of Basra in recent months to merge three of Iraq's 18 provinces around Basra into a new federal region.

That plan too had been criticized by other groups fearful that Sunnis and others in central Iraq would lose control of the vast southern oilfields. Sunnis also fear Kurdish ambitions to extend their control over oil reserves in the north.

Division of oil revenues has played a big role for leaders locked in talks this week. Hakim and Amery said south and central Iraq should be allowed autonomy within a new federation.

An interim constitution states that Baghdad, in the center and with a mixed population, should not be drawn into such an arrangement. But a region stretching from the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala to Basra near the Gulf would have a largely Shi'ite population comprising roughly half of Iraq's 26 million people.

Other participants in talks on the constitution have said that they expect rules on how federal regions can be formed to be left out of the draft and left for later discussion.

(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Hiba Moussa, Andrew Hammon, Waleed Ibrahim and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)

Source: REUTERS

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