Iraq constitution drafters get 1-day extension

updated 8:14 p.m. ET Aug. 25, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The speaker of Iraq’s parliament announced a one-day extension early Friday in talks on Iraq’s new constitution — a fourth attempt to win Sunni Arab approval. But he said that if no agreement is reached, the document would bypass parliament completely and be decided in an Oct. 15 referendum.

Shiite leaders signaled they had lost patience with protracted negotiating and wanted to refer the draft approved by them and the Kurds last Monday to the electorate. With repeated missed deadlines and no sign of compromise, a process designed to bring the country’s disparate ethnic, cultural and religious groups closer together appeared instead to be pushing them further apart.

A Shiite power play would undercut one of Washington’s goals for the constitution: to invigorate a political process that will lure disaffected Sunni Arabs away from the Sunni-dominated insurgency so that U.S. and other foreign troops can begin to go home next year.

Despite the dim outlook for an agreement, parliament speaker Hajim al-Hassani, a Sunni who was elected on the mostly Sunni ticket headed by former President Ghazi al-Yawer, said he remained optimistic.

“We found that time was late and we saw that the matters will need another day in order to reach results that please everyone,” al-Hassani said on national television shortly after the midnight deadline. The Friday session was an attempt to give the Shiites time to respond to proposals tabled at a late-night meeting for which they did not show up.

“There are pressures on everyone — by the Americans and also by factions,” Kurdish negotiator Mahmoud Othman said. “They believe that there is hope and for that reason (al-Hassani) asked for an extension on the hope that maybe they will reach the final stages.”

No parliament vote required
Al-Hassani agreed that no parliamentary vote was required since the assembly fulfilled its legal obligations by accepting the Shiite and Kurdish-approved draft on Monday.

“If we will not be able to reach agreements in the end, this constitution is going to be presented to the Iraqis in an Oct. 15 referendum,” al-Hassani said. “Legally we do not need the parliament to vote on the draft, but we need only a consensus so that all the Iraqis will say yes to the constitution.”

Monday was the second deadline which the legislature granted after the drafting committee failed to meet the Aug. 15 date set in the interim constitution.

The parliament speaker said that discussions over the previous three days were “very good, in which points of views were exchanged.” He said they discussed federalism, references to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party and the constitution’s introduction.

The Shiite alliance and the Kurds together control 221 of the 275 parliament seats and could win easily in a parliamentary vote on the charter, which requires only a majority. And with 60 percent of the population, the Shiites and their Kurdish allies are gambling that the draft would win approval in the referendum.

However, the perception that the Shiites and Kurds pushed through a document unacceptable to the Sunnis could sharpen religious and ethnic tensions.

As a sign of deep religious and ethnic tensions already tearing at Iraq, police found the bodies of 36 men Thursday in a dry river bed near the Iranian border, their hands bound and with bullet wounds in the head.

The bodies contained no identification and police said most were wearing baggy trousers favored by Kurds. But when photographers arrived, they saw the bodies wearing normal clothing.

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