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.