Iraq’s constitution committee signs draft charter

Mohammed Abed-Rabbou, one of the four principle negotiators on the 15-member Sunni team, said the Sunni officials refused to accept the draft “because the points of disagreement were not amended” to their satisfaction.

Those included proposals to transform Iraq into a federated country and references to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

Another Sunni negotiator, Fakhr al-Qaisi, said the draft was rejected because of wording about “Iraq’s unity, Iraq’s Arab identity.”

The comments set the stage for a bitter political battle before the Oct. 15 referendum when Iraqis will decide whether to accept or reject the document. Five million copies of the constitution will be circulated nationwide in food allotments each Iraqi family receives monthly from the government.

The amendments — made in hopes of appeasing the Sunni Arab minority — included removing the word “party” from a phrase about Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and allowing the next parliament to decide the fate of a committee set up to purge former Baath Party members from government, state jobs and political life.

Earlier on Sunday, Sunni negotiator Sadoun Zubaydi said “this is the end as far as the marginalized groups are concerned” and “as far as the drafting process is concerned.

“We now have to see how to proceed from here,” he said.

Shiite legislator Mohammed Baqir al-Bahadli said “the constitution drafting committee has completed its work” and that an advertising and media campaign would begin right after the announcement to try to rally public support.

Parliament speaker Hajim al-Hassani had said the National Assembly would convene Sunday to accept the draft despite opposition from Sunni Arabs to portions of the document.

The interim constitution does not implicitly require legislative approval.

Sunnis account for only 20 percent of Iraq’s 27 million people, but they are in a strong position to derail the constitution. If two-thirds of voters in any three provinces reject the charter in the referendum scheduled for Oct. 15, the constitution will be defeated, and Sunnis have the majority in at least four provinces.

After two months of talks, negotiators for the Shiite-Kurd bloc and the Sunnis remain divided over fundamental issues that include: whether Iraq should be turned into a federal state or decentralized by granting more power to provincial authorities; how the country’s oil wealth will be divided; whether members of Saddam’ Hussein’s banned Baath Party should be purged; and whether Iraq will be considered an Arab or Islamic nation.

The deadlock in the talks came despite frantic efforts by the United States to secure a political consensus that would hopefully deliver a massive vote in favor of the charter — taking the steam out of the Sunni-led insurgency and enabling a drawdown of U.S. troops to start next year. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad met with various negotiators and al-Hassani late Saturday trying to broker wording acceptable to the Sunnis.

Sunni leaders said their people should oppose the charter peacefully by voting “no” in the referendum.

“The (Sunni) bloc should now convene a general conference to decide how to proceed,” Zubaydi said. “Boycotting the referendum and parliamentary elections (in December) would be a lose-lose proposition. Our hope will be in the next parliament that will hopefully be more balanced than this one.”

In other developments:

—A suicide car bomber targeting a U.S. patrol in southeastern Mousl killed three civilians, police said.

—Iraqi police on Sunday found nine bodies in Mosul’s al Intisar neighborhood. Eight of them were civilians and the other was a policeman, authorities said.

— The government’s top Sunni cleric said Sunday that 36 bodies found three days ago in a dry riverbed near the Iranian border are believed to be Sunni Arabs.

Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai, head of the government’s Sunni Endowments, said the bodies “are believed to be for people from (Baghdad’s northern neighborhood of) Hurriyah and they belong to the Sunni sect.” The cleric did not give further details.

If true, the killings are likely to heighten sectarian tensions. Both Sunnis and Shiites have accused one another of involvement in “death squad” assassinations of members of the rival sect.

All of the men were shot in the head execution-style and some were cuffed. The bodies were discovered near the town of Badrah southeast of Baghdad.