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Iraq assembly gets charter draft but Sunnis fight

Posted on: Monday, 22 August 2005, 18:45 CDT

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."

Source: REUTERS

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