By Sameer N. Yacoub
The Associated Press, 23 August 2005.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The head of the committee drafting Iraq's constitution said Tuesday that three days are not enough to win over the Sunni Arabs, and the document they rejected may ultimately have to be approved by parliament as is and taken to the people in a referendum.
Iraqi leaders completed a draft Monday night and submitted it to parliament, but — just minutes from a midnight deadline — lawmakers delayed a vote to give negotiators time to persuade Sunni Arabs to accept it.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad urged the Iraqis to work "in spirit of compromise" and "take the national interest into account" when they resume talks Wednesday.
He said "every effort needs to be made" to win Sunni Arab support for the draft and that it "behooves" Iraq's other communities — Shiites and Kurds — to "reach out" to the Sunnis in the interest of national unity. "This is not the time to achieve all that one can at the expense of others," Khalilzad told reporters Tuesday. He said the time had come "to build the new Iraq on new principles." President Bush, asked about the possibility that objections to the draft from Sunnis could trigger a civil war, said: "The Sunnis have got to make a choice: Do they want to live in a society that's free?"
At a news conference Tuesday, drafting committee chairman Humam Hammoudi acknowledged that more time was probably needed to extract a compromise from Sunnis, who objected to wording on federalism, Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, the description of Iraq as an Islamic — but not Arab — country, and other parts of the document.
Asked how to break the impasse, Hammoudi said "the Iraqi people will rule" and suggested that the elected parliament could debate the issues and make a decision. Shiites and Kurds, who accepted the agreement, dominate the assembly.
Approving the draft and submitting it to voters in an Oct. 15 referendum risks a backlash among Sunni Arabs, who are at the forefront of the insurgency. Luring them away from violence and into the political process was a major U.S. goal for the constitution.
But Hammoudi noted that unlike Shiite and Kurd negotiators, Sunni Arabs were not elected parliament members but appointed to the committee. Sunni Arabs won only 17 of 275 parliament seats because so many Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election.
"Those who are representing the brother Sunni Arabs are not elected," Hammoudi said. "Therefore, who can say that they really represent the people on the street ... therefore the Sunnis have to express their opinion."
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, appeared to make an overture to the minority.
"Some of the political groups have some reservations and we will study them and try to reach a solution in the next three days," he said at a news conference in Baghdad on Tuesday.
"Our Sunni Arab brothers faced some circumstances in the past that prevented them from having real representation (in parliament) in what is equal to their demography, and we hope that in the future they will be better represented."
The wrangling over the constitution came amid persistent violence.
A U.S. soldier, an American contractor and five Iraqis were killed Tuesday when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in a city north of Baghdad, the military said.
A statement said the blast occurred in Diyala Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, at 12:50 p.m. The explosion also killed four Iraqi employees of the center and one Iraqi police officer.
Nine U.S. soldiers were wounded, along with one U.S. civilian contractor, six Iraqi civilians and four police officers. All the wounded were evacuated to a military hospital for treatment, the statement said.
At least 1,872 U.S. troops have died since the Iraq war started in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Monday night's last-minute scrambling by the constitutional committee came one week after the original, Aug. 15 deadline.
White House counselor Dan Bartlett urged patience and flexibility.
"These issues are difficult to iron out and I think we should show some patience," he said on NBC's "Today" show. "Every time we've had a deadline, the Iraqi people have lived up to those deadlines ... so deadlines are important. ... It's important to help focus the process, but at the same time we ought to be flexible and allow them to work out their differences."
The 15 Sunni members of the drafting committee issued a statement saying they had rejected the proposal because the government and the committee did not abide by an agreement for consensus. They said agreement on the document was still far off.
Despite the failure to finalize the proposal for a second time in two weeks, government spokesman Laith Kubba said the proceedings demonstrated the democratic nature of the drafting process.
"After a long discussion, this is the best we could get. The Iraqi people can accept or reject this new constitution. This is a new experiment." Kubba said. "The process should be completed."
But Saleh al-Mutlaq, one of four top Sunni negotiators, said more than 20 issues still divide the sides.
Sunnis, who dominated Iraqi society under Saddam, oppose decentralization, fearing it would cut them out of the country's oil wealth and leave them powerless.
Hammoudi, the committee chairman, said a federal structure was critical to maintaining democracy in Iraq. "With all this oil income, the central government will turn into, whether we like it or not, a dictatorship," he said.
If no compromise is reached on Sunni demands, "we will turn it to the Iraqi people to say yes or no," he said.
Sunni leaders have threatened to order their followers to vote "no" in the October referendum on the constitution unless their objections are addressed.
In Samarra, a Sunni-dominated city 60 miles north of Baghdad, hundreds of people lined up Tuesday at voter registration centers.
"We came here ... to register our names and we should not commit a mistake as we did before," said resident Hameed Hassan, referring to the Sunni boycott of the January elections for the National Assembly.
Adnan Latif, head of the center, said about 5,000 voters had registered so far.
But in the city of Najaf, the seat of the Shiite clerical hierarchy, celebrations erupted after the draft constitution was presented to lawmakers. Crowds carrying Iraqi flags and a number of police vehicles streamed through the city center.
The constitutional draft declares that Islam is "a main source" of legislation, and that no law may contradict Islamic and democratic standards or "the essential rights and freedoms mentioned in this constitution."
It guarantees "the Islamic identity of the Iraqi people" but also "all religious rights" and states that all Iraqis "are free within their ideology and the practice of their ideological practices."
The text also declares both Arabic and Kurdish as official languages, bringing Kurdish to an equal status nationwide.
Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press
Citation: Sameer N. Yacoub. "Iraqi Pessimistic of Constitution Deal," The Associated Press, 23 August 2005.
Original URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5228263,00.html