Iraq assembly gets charter draft but Sunnis fight

By Michael Georgy and Andrew Hammond

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s tentative efforts at consensus
politics were pushed to breaking point when the Shi’ite
majority forced a draft constitution into parliament in
defiance of Sunni warnings that it could ignite civil war.

Minutes from a midnight deadline on Monday, the Shi’ite and
Kurdish -dominated National Assembly averted a final rift with
the once dominant Sunni minority by putting off any vote on the
text for three days.

But there was little sign disputes over autonomy for
federal regions could be settled in that time.

With U.S. diplomats forcing the pace on a timetable that
President George W. Bush says can help quell a Sunni
insurgency, Shi’ite and Kurdish officials indicated they would
force the charter through parliament come what may if Sunnis
still object.

For their part, representatives of the Sunni community that
dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein and long before said they
would now fight the constitution in a referendum in October.

The three days’ grace accorded by speaker Hajim al-Hassani,
a Sunni, before parliament seems set to adopt what Shi’ite and
Kurdish leaders were already calling the “final” draft seems as
much an effort to cool tempers as offer real hope of consensus.

“UPRISING IN STREETS”

“If it passes, there will be an uprising in the streets,”
Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak said after a 10-minute sitting
at which Hassani declared the draft had been delivered on time.

“We will campaign … 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,” Soha Allawi, another Sunni
Arab on the constitution-drafting committee, told Reuters.

But government delegates gave little ground. The Shi’ite
head of the committee, Humam Hamoudi, said if there was no
consensus in three days “the constitution will keep moving.”

Kurdish lawmaker Ahmed Pinjwani conceded, however, that if
the Sunnis could not be won over “it will move with a limp.”

Hassani said only four topics were still in dispute. But of
these the fundamental issue of federalism remained.

The draft prepared by Shi’ites and Kurds gave ground to
some Sunni fears of Shi’ites and Kurds hiving off strong
federal regions in the oil-rich north and south.

But Sunnis stood by a demand “federalism” be left out.

The draft also made Islam “a main source” of law in what
seemed a compromise between Islamist Shi’ites and secular
Kurds.

Sunni Arabs, about 20 percent of the population, largely
shunned the January election that produced the interim National
Assembly, giving them little clout in the drafting process,
despite attempts to bring them in to produce a consensus.

SUNNIS REGISTER FOR REFERENDUM

But after two-and-a-half years of U.S. occupation in which
Iraqi politics have been dominated by the well-organized
Shi’ite and Kurdish parties that opposed Saddam from exile,
Sunnis are now registering in numbers to vote in the
referendum, scheduled by October 15, and a parliamentary
election to follow in December.

“We cannot wait and give them all the time they need to be
convinced,” said Jalal-el-Din al-Sagheer, a Shi’ite cleric on
the constitution-drafting committee. “If our Sunni Arab
brothers don’t want to vote for federalism then they can reject
it.”

Interim rules say the charter will fail if two thirds of
voters in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces vote against it.

Parliament, having already granted one week-long deadline
extension, had faced dissolution if the deadline set in the
U.S.-sponsored timetable had been missed. That would have sent
the drafting of a constitution back to the drawing board.

But Bush, campaigning to quell growing disquiet at home
over the costly military occupation of Iraq, has pressed hard
for the deadlines to be kept.

In a speech on Monday he said he owed it to the more than
1,800 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq to keep the U.S.
presence as part of his war on terrorism.

His spokesman welcomed Monday’s political developments.

U.S. SEEKS CONSENSUS

The U.S. envoy in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he would go
on working to foster consensus in Iraq and stressed the need to
draw Sunnis into politics as a means of ending the violence
that is keeping 140,000 American troops pinned down in the
country.

Two more soldiers were killed north of Baghdad on Monday.

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

Some Shi’ites, notably radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, also
reject federalism. But government-run television showed wild
rejoicing in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf after news of the
ruling coalition’s plans to force through its charter.

Kurdish delegate Abdel Khalek Zangana said the provision on
federalism satisfied Kurdish demands for guarantees they would
retain the broad autonomy they already have in the north.

One Sunni 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.

Secular Kurdish delegates had complained Khalilzad had made
concessions to Shi’ite Islamists in allowing for a greater role
for Islam in Iraqi law. The text said laws must not be contrary
to the “fixed principles of the rules of Islam.”