|
Two sunnis on constitution panel killed { July 21 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/21/4_sunnis_leave_panel_on_compact_after_killings/http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/21/4_sunnis_leave_panel_on_compact_after_killings/
4 Sunnis leave panel on compact after killings
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | July 21, 2005
BAGHDAD -- Four Sunni Arab politicians withdrew yesterday from the group writing Iraq's new constitution after two colleagues were assassinated, threatening to derail the country's path toward full sovereignty.
''We cannot be a part of this," said Saleh Mutlak, one of the Sunnis who suspended their membership on the constitutional committee, saying the government was not providing enough security for them. One Sunni member of the panel, a Sunni adviser, and their bodyguard were gunned down Tuesday just after leaving a National Assembly session on the constitution.
''We want a full international investigation" into the killings, Mutlak said, reflecting the Sunnis' belief that the Shi'ite-dominated government would not look closely into the assassination because it tacitly condones violence against hard-line, proresistance Sunni Arabs.
The politicians who pulled out yesterday were from a Sunni Arab group called the Council on Dialogue, which claims close ties to the insurgency that continues to roil nearly half the country, including the capital.
Iraqi leaders of all stripes fear that a constitution without the support of the Sunni minority might fail to pass muster in a national referendum. And the insurgency won't subside, many Iraqi politicians agree, until the Sunni Arab heartland that has provided much of the insurgency's firepower begins to support the government.
The coalition of Shi'ite parties that dominates the government -- and the constitution committee -- could easily agree on a proposed constitution by ignoring the will of Sunnis, said Sa'ad Jawad Qandil, an influential Shi'ite member of the core constitution-writing body and member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. However, he said that if the Shi'ite Muslim majority opted to ignore the Sunnis, it would invite relentless strife.
''We want their support for a constitution," Qandil said.
The Shi'ite and Kurdish-controlled Transitional National Assembly appointed 55 members to its constitution committee in May, but only two were Sunni Arabs, and both were selected by the ruling Shi'ite-Kurd alliance.
Last month, the Sunni Arab groups that largely boycotted the January election for the National Assembly were allowed to name 15 new members to the committee, so that Sunnis would be represented in the constitution-writing process.
Yesterday, Sunni Arabs met late into the evening to decide whether the remaining nine members of the constitution panel committee would also withdraw.
The Sunni delegates demanded that the Iraqi government provide them security details and special access to the Green Zone, where Transitional National Assembly meetings are held.
Despite the turmoil among the Sunni minority, the constitution-writing committee's chairman, Humam Hammoudi, said yesterday that the document would be ready before the Aug. 15 deadline, setting the stage for a nationwide referendum on the constitution by the October deadline set forth in Iraq's transitional constitution.
Delegates already have resolved the thorny issue of Islam's role, Hammoudi and Qandil said, according it a central status as the ''primary" source of all legislation.
Under the terms of the draft constitution so far agreed on by the delegates, the country's name would become the ''Federal Islamic Republic of Iraq," and a supreme constitutional court dominated by religious scholars would have the final authority to overturn any legislation contrary to the spirit of Islam, Hammoudi said.
The constitutional committee has stalled on a final point of dissent, negotiators from all factions said: the question of Iraq's federal system. The issue is sensitive because of the precarious ethnic balance in the country among Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shi'ite Arabs.
Kurds want a federal system that allows them to maintain their autonomous status in a self-governing northern region with its own language, government, and militia. At the other extreme, Sunni Arabs -- accustomed to controlling the central government and the country's oil resources during Saddam Hussein's dictatorship -- fear a federal system that would cut Sunni Arab regions almost entirely off from power and resources.
Violence has continued to flare in Iraq as the political establishment rushes to meet the August constitutional deadline, necessary if a referendum is to be held in October and new national elections in December.
A suicide bomber killed 10 at Muthana Air Base in downtown Baghdad yesterday, a recruiting site for the Iraqi Army that has been the site of repeated attacks, including another suicide bombing July 10 that killed 25.
President Jalal Talabani and Speaker of Parliament Hajim al-Hasani condemned the assassinations as an attempt by terrorists to halt Iraq's political process.
In a statement, Hasani -- a moderate Sunni -- called for the government to hold itself responsible for ''every drop of Iraqi blood" and to tighten security around the constitutional committee.
''The goal of the terrorist groups in assassinating the members of the constitutional committee yesterday is to assassinate the constitutional process," Hasani said.
On Tuesday morning, just before he was assassinated, Sunni Arab representative Mijbil Issa had presented the Sunni position on federalism, calling for a strong central government in Baghdad that would control the military and all oil resources.
That position is not acceptable to the Shi'ite majority, Qandil said.
Kurds in the north and Shi'ites from the oil-rich south have pushed for the other extreme, even proposing a loose federation in which different regions of Iraq would be able to make their own foreign policy.
The Kurds were subject to a genocidal campaign by Hussein's Ba'ath Party regime, and they jealously protect the independence they carved out, with some American protection, after the 1991 Gulf War.
Saadi al Barazanchi, a Kurdish member of the committee, expressed skepticism yesterday that Kurds would feel welcome in the new Iraq. ''None of the governments of Iraq were able to make the Kurdish people feel they belonged to Iraq," he said.
According to Qandil, the Kurds on the constitution committee dismissed the last Shi'ite proposal on federalism as ''less than Saddam offered."
The current transitional government has said it wants a constitution that preserves the unity of the Iraqi state, which is also a publicly stated goal of US policy in Iraq.
Despite widespread concern expressed by women and secular Iraqis about the elevated status of Islam in the constitution, the drafters appear to have accepted many provisions that accept the dominant role of Islam.
The current draft would define Islam as the main source of legislation, rather than as one of the sources as the interim constitution does. Hammoudi said it would be left to a future legislature to design the constitutional court that would have final power to veto legislation considered un-Islamic.
''The role of Islam is a basic demand," said Jalaluddin Saghir, a Shi'ite imam and a member of the constitution committee. ''The only unsolved question is the structure of the court itself -- how many college professors, how many clerics, details."
Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
|
|
