Three Sunnis working on the draft of Iraq’s new Constitution were gunned down in Baghdad on Tuesday, rattling hopes expressed earlier in the day that the new charter might be completed ahead of schedule.
Mijbil Alshiekh Isa, Dhamin Hussein and Aziz Ibrahim were among 15 prominent Sunni Arabs from outside Parliament invited to work on the panel drafting the charter.
They were shot dead in mid-afternoon after their Peugeot sedan was forced to a halt by a small car on a broad and busy central Baghdad avenue. Witnesses said a second car pulled up beside them, a passenger rolled down the window and fired a a hail of bullets from a heavy PKC automatic rifle at the Peugeot.
When the shooters fled, a sole police officer pulled out his revolver and emptied it in the direction of the fleeing vehicle, nearby shopkeeper Abu Hussein said.
”I found the driver still half alive,” a shaking Hussein said. ”I pushed him to the side and drove to the hospital.”
Fearing he could be identified and targeted for retaliation, Hussein quickly left the hospital and returned to his store. He changed his blood-stained clothes, but still had blood on his cheek where the driver rested against him.
The shooting came just hours after President Jalal Talabani boldly predicted that the new Constitution could be ready by the end of the month pending the settlement of some final differences with the minority Sunnis on the panel.
”There are some issues raised by our Sunni Arab brothers about the Constitution and we are discussing them,” Talabani told reporters at a joint press conference with former prime minister Iyad Allawi.
”If we reach an agreement, I think the Constitution could be ready by the end of the current month,” he said.
The Constitution is at a key stage in Iraq’s political transition following the United States-led invasion that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
It is also an important milestone in US plans for a military withdrawal from Iraq.
The document must be finished by August 15 and put to a national referendum by October 15, according to the transitional administrative law serving as a temporary Constitution, ahead of legislative elections in December.
However, the law allows for a single extension of up to six months if the deadline cannot be met.
Sunni Iraqis, who were dominant under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, are under-represented in Parliament because they largely boycotted legislative elections in January, the first democratic polls in half a century.
The 71-member panel working on the Constitution includes two Sunni lawmakers elected in January as well as the 15 — now 12 — Sunni Arab outsiders.
In Washington, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said the slayings were the work of terrorists ”who seek to derail the transition to a free and democratic Iraq. They are enemies of the Iraqi people and they will be defeated.”
Last month, the head of the committee drafting the Constitution, Sheik Humam Hamudi, said the bulk of the document had already been written and that the most sensitive issues were still pending resolution.
The thorniest issues include first defining, then implementing a federal system; the state’s relationship with Islam, the country’s dominant religion; dealing with the legacy of Saddam’s Ba’ath party; and even what to call Iraq officially.
Former premier Allawi, whose party is the third largest in Parliament with 40 seats, said negotiators agreed that the document would be based on the transitional administrative law, which was written during the period of the now-defunct, US-appointed coalition provisional authority.
The Shi’ites and Kurds, who now dominate both Parliament and the coalition government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, are pushing hard to safeguard their interests.
The Shi’ite majority in Parliament, a group largely ruled by black-turbaned clerics, is pushing for a prominent and leading role for Islam in state affairs.
The Kurds, the second-largest group in the legislature, are demanding a federal system that would grant them the northern oil city of Kirkuk.
Both say, however, that they are eager to reach out to Sunni Arabs, who are now accused of fuelling the deadly insurgency.
Attacks continue
At least 31 people were killed on Tuesday in Iraq violence, including 13 slaughtered when insurgents ambushed a bus carrying workers to a US army base, police and military officials said.
Iraq has been reeling under a blitz of attacks since Friday in which more than 150 have been killed and scores wounded, including a fuel-tanker bombing on Saturday that killed 83 people.
Following are details on the main attacks on Tuesday:
Baquba: Ten workers were killed when a bus came under heavy gunfire from the attackers near the city of Baquba, north-east of Baghdad. Another three civilians in a passing car were killed when the bus careered out of control and slammed into the vehicle, an interior ministry official said. The bus driver was wounded.
Baghdad: Three Sunni Arab members of the constitutional panel were gunned down (see report above).
Kirkuk: Two people were killed and four others wounded when a Iraqi police patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, police said. One of the dead was a police officer, while the other was a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of President Talabani.
Tikrit: A police major was killed when an explosive planted outside university gates in Saddam Hussein’s hometown exploded, police said.
Tallafar: Three civilians were killed and four injured when a mortar round exploded in this restive north-western city, close to the Syrian border.
Two insurgents were also killed and five civilians injured in clashes between insurgents and the Iraqi army in the city, hospital director Saleh Mohammed said.
West of Tallafar, one civilian was killed and four injured when Iraqi police clashed with insurgents.
Police also found two unidentified bodies in Tallafar, Mohammed said, while a businessman’s body was found in Baiji.
Four Iraqi soldiers and four civilians were killed in separate attacks north of Baghdad in Samarra, Balad and Al-Ishaki. The attacks also left eight others wounded, seven of them soldiers, the army said. — Sapa-AFP