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Shiites grab for sunni oil in new iraqi constitution

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   http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/12485161.htm

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/12485161.htm

Posted on Fri, Aug. 26, 2005
Shiites offer 'final compromise' on Iraq constitution

By Qassim Abdul-Zahra

Associated Press


Prodded by President Bush, Shiite negotiators Friday offered what they called their final compromise proposal to Sunni Arabs to try to break the impasse about Iraq’s new constitution, a Shiite official said.

Bush telephoned a key Shiite leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, on Thursday to urge consensus, Abbas al-Bayati told The Associated Press.

The Shiites were awaiting a response from the Sunnis, al-Bayati said.

Later, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Kurdish mediator Barham Saleh were seen arriving at a Green Zone residence where top Shiites were huddling.

He said the concessions were on the pivotal issues of federalism and efforts to remove former members of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated Baath Party from public life, adding: “We cannot offer more than that.”

There was no comment from Sunni negotiators.

But in a sign of public opinion within the Sunni community, the country’s Sunni vice president said the current draft was written only by Shiites and Kurds and is “far from the aspirations of all Iraqi people.”

“We are trying to put forward the views of others,” Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer, a former Iraqi president, told Al-Jazeera television Friday. “We want this constitution to maintain the unity of Iraqi soil and give rights to all Iraqis.”

Al-Bayati said the Shiites had proposed that the parliament expected to be elected in December be given the right to issue a law on the mechanism of implementing federalism. He gave no further details.

The constitution provides for a federal state, one in which provinces would have significant powers in contrast to Saddam’s regime in which Sunnis dominated a strong central government.

The charter will allow any number of provinces to combine and form a federal state with broader powers.

The Sunnis have demanded a limit of three provinces, the number the Kurds have in their self-ruled region in the north. The Sunnis have publicly accepted the continued existence of the Kurdish regional administration within its current boundaries.

But without limits, Sunnis fear not only a giant Shiite state in the south but also future bids by the Kurds to expand their region, as they have demanded. That would leave the Sunnis cut off from Iraq’s oil wealth in the north and south.

Al-Bayati said it will be up to the next parliament to set a timetable for the work of the Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification.

The Sunnis had insisted that the issue of dividing Iraq into federated regions be deferred until after the December parliamentary election. Many Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election for the current parliament, which is dominated by Shiites and Kurds.

Sadoun Zubaydi, a Sunni member of the drafting committee, said the Sunnis would have to see the fine points of the Shiite proposal first. If the proposal does not make concessions on the principle of federalism but only the mechanism, this would not meet Sunni demands.

“Our position is that both the principle and mechanism should be deferred,” Zubaydi told the AP. “Our policy is decentralization, but not political federalism with borders, division of resources, etc. That is separatism, not federalism.”

The issue of federalism is complex, and some key Sunnis have taken a harder line against it than their negotiators. Some Sunni clerics have also condemned as anti-Islamic parts of the document their own negotiators have accepted.

“Don’t follow constitutions of the infidels,” influential Sunni cleric Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei told the congregation Friday at the Umm al-Qura mosque. “We don’t want a constitution that brings the curse of separation and division to this country.”

Al-Bayati and fellow Shiite negotiator Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite member of the committee drafting the charter, said Bush telephoned al-Hakim after Shiites said the negotiations were deadlocked and the draft submitted Monday to parliament should go to the voters in the Oct. 15 referendum as is.

But bypassing the Sunnis would risk a backlash among the community at the core of the insurgency and which the United States wants to encourage to join the political process.

Al-Adeeb said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had also appealed to Iraq’s powerful Shiite clergy, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to help resolve the standoff.

The White House confirmed that Bush made the call prior to the midnight Thursday deadline, but said there would be no comment on the latest compromise proposal.

Bush’s call “reflects...that this is an Iraqi process and that the United States is here to help them,” said White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.

Bush had urged that a consensus be found on the draft of a constitution.

For more on this story, see Saturday's editions of The Journal Gazette or visit http://www.journalgazette.net after 7 a.m. Fort Wayne time Saturday.

POSTED: 11:55 A.M. FRIDAY, AUG. 26, 2005



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