Iraq Shi’ites aim to push through constitution

By Michael Georgy and Andrew Hammond

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s ruling Shi’ite Islamists
prepared to force a constitution through parliament before a
midnight Monday deadline but minority Sunnis vowed to vote it
down in a referendum and warned of civil war.

President Bush, campaigning to quell growing disquiet at
home over the costly military occupation of Iraq, has pressed
hard for the U.S.-sponsored timetable to be respected and says
it will help sap the Sunni Arab insurgency.

A draft prepared without the participation of minority
Sunni Arab delegates appeared nonetheless to give ground to
some of their concerns about Shi’ites and Kurds hiving off
powerful federal regions in the oil-rich north and south.

A text seen by Reuters defined Iraq as a “federal”
republic. Details on the extent and mechanisms of autonomy
would be worked out later, delegates involved in drafting the
text said.

Sunnis, outraged at what they called a “breach of
consensus,” stood by a demand that “federalism” be left out of
the charter altogether and said otherwise Iraq could break up.

“All the history of Iraq’s problems is contained in this
constitution — racism, sectarianism and secession,” said Sunni
delegate Hussein Shukur al-Falluji. “If they pass this
constitution, then the rebellion will reach its peak.”

With parliament, where Shi’ites have a big majority,
risking dissolution if no draft were adopted by midnight,
senior Shi’ites said the text would be passed comfortably and
put to the nation, as scheduled, in a referendum by October 15.

“An agreed draft of the constitution will be presented to
parliament and we expect that it will meet with broad
acceptance, including from the Sunnis,” deputy parliamentary
speaker Hussain al-Shahristani told Reuters.

“CIVIL WAR”

Few Sunnis could be found to endorse the proposal, however.

“We will not be silent,” Soha Allawi, another Sunni Arab
member of the drafting committee, told Reuters.

“We will campaign for public awareness to tell both Sunnis
and Shi’ites to reject the constitution, which has elements
that will lead to the break-up of Iraq and civil war,” she
said.

Kurdish leaders helped negotiate the draft; delegate Abdel
Khalek Zangana said the provision on federalism was enough to
satisfy Kurdish demands for guarantees they would retain the
broad autonomy they already have in the north.

One Sunni Arab leader said the text had dropped wording
that forbade secession from Iraq; Kurdish leaders say they do
not want to break away entirely, but want to keep the option
open.

U.S. diplomats, led by ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad,
architect of the new Afghan constitution, have been working
hard to save the deadline. Secular Kurdish delegates had
complained he had made concessions to the Shi’ite Islamists in
allowing for a greater role for Islam in Iraqi law.

The draft document, seen in part by Reuters, described Iraq
as a “republican, parliamentarian, democratic and federal”
state. No section on Islam and the law was available.

Leaders of the Sunni Arab community, dominant under Saddam
Hussein and the seat of an insurgency against the U.S.-backed
interim government, had warned the constitution could be voted
down. Interim rules say it will fail if in three of Iraq’s 18
provinces, two thirds of voters reject the charter.

In former rebel strongholds like Falluja and across the
Sunni heartlands of the north and west, which largely shunned
the January polls that produced the Shi’ite and Kurd-dominated
interim legislature, voters have been registering in numbers.

SHI’ITES SPLIT

Some Shi’ites, notably supporters of radical cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr who has a strong following in resource-poor central
Iraq, also reject federalism and demand “Iraqi unity.”

With discontent spreading at the government’s failure to
curb violence or improve living standards, rival parties see a
chance to embarrass it at the polls.

Former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, a secular
Shi’ite with allies among Sunnis, has been marking out his
distance from the ruling coalition, led by Shi’ite Islamists
and Kurds.

Some critics, backed by concerned Sunni governments in
other Arab states, complain Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran —
Washington’s rival in the region — is influencing the
government.

Some even accuse Tehran of seeking to break up its Arab
neighbor, formed by British imperialists out of the collapsed
Ottoman empire in 1918, and of promoting the formation of a
Shi’ite state in the oil-rich south. Most Iraqi Shi’ites, about
60 percent of the population, reject such charges.

If the referendum ratifies the constitution, voting in
December will be for a full-term parliament with full powers.

Though portrayed in Washington as a key test of Iraq’s
cohesion and ability to overcome the threat of civil war, there
is little sign clinching a deal will ease the bloodshed.

Gunmen killed 10 people, including eight policemen, driving
in a minivan north of Baghdad on Monday.