Iraq assembly gets charter draft, Sunnis irate

Iraq assembly gets charter draft, Sunnis irate

Alastair Macdonald, Reuters/Baghdad

Iraq's Shiite-led government ruled out on Tuesday any major change to a draft constitution that parliament looks set to pass this week in the teeth of minority Sunni objections that it could ignite civil war.

"The draft that was submitted is approximately the draft that will be implemented," government spokesman Laith Kubba said after parliament received the text before a midnight deadline. The assembly put off a vote for three days to let tempers cool.

President Jalal Talabani, who has brought Iraqi leaders together for weeks in a bid to keep the political process on track, renewed mediation efforts.

A statement from his office said the Kurdish leader urged all Iraqi sects to unite on the issue of the constitution, which the government hopes will undermine the Sunni insurgency.

The Shiite head of the parliamentary drafting committee again made clear he did not intend to reopen contentious clauses such as those on autonomous "federal" regions which Arab Sunnis say discriminate against them and could break up the state.

Humam Hamoudi said the Sunni negotiators brought in from outside parliament were not representative and that the assembly should now submit the draft to a referendum.

Sunni leaders, who largely shunned a January election that gave Shiites and Kurds control of parliament, said they were mobilizing support for a "no" vote in the October referendum.

U.S. diplomats, under pressure from Washington to keep Iraqi negotiators to a timetable laid down under American supervision last year, say they will go on working for a consensus that can draw the once-dominant Sunnis away from violent opposition.

But one participant in the talks said a comprehensive deal would require a Sunni change of heart. "The only possible change now is that the Sunnis become convinced on federalism," said Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, a Shiite cleric on the drafting team.

Shiites and Kurds said they might offer minor concessions, but were ready to use their parliamentary muscle to push through the draft.

"If it passes, there will be an uprising in the streets," Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak said after the brief sitting.

"We will campaign ... to tell both Sunnis and Shiites to reject the constitution, which has elements that will lead to the break-up of Iraq and civil war," Soha Allawi, another Sunni on the drafting committee, told Reuters.

Interim rules say the charter will fail if two thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it. By some reckoning, that could happen in the three provinces around the cities of Mosul, Tikrit and Ramadi, north and west of Baghdad.

Iraq's government hopes the constitution will divert more Sunnis from insurgency into peaceful politics. Fresh violence underlined what a tough challenge it is facing.

Three car bombs exploded in quick succession near U.S. forces in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, in an apparently coordinated strike by insurgents, police and witnesses said.

In the first blast, a car blew up as a U.S. convoy passed through the center of the Sunni city, police said.

Minutes later, a suicide truck bomber rammed his vehicle into a building frequently occupied by U.S. troops in an industrial zone on the edge of Ramadi, witnesses said.

As U.S. troops arrived, a third bomb, concealed in a car parked near a mosque, went off, a reporter for Reuters near the scene said. There was no immediate word on U.S. or Iraqi casualties.

In Ad Dawr, close to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town, hundreds of Sunnis demonstrated against the draft constitution. "Long live the honorable insurgency," the crowd yelled.

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

Secular Shiites, notably a party led by U.S.-backed former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, have voiced doubts at the way the draft constitution is being pushed through parliament.

The draft makes Islam "a main source" of law in an apparent compromise between Islamist Chateaus and secular Kurds.