A leading Iraqi Shi’ite politician demanded autonomy for central and southern provinces where the majority community predominates on Thursday, four days before the deadline for a final draft of a new Constitution.
The proposed Shi’ite autonomous region would mirror a Kurdish one in the far north, and the call from Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the powerful Shi’ite religious party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, gave new support to Kurdish demands for a fully federal Iraq.
On the ground, at least 16 people died in insurgent attacks as a source close to the Iraqi court charged with considering war-crimes prosecutions against Saddam Hussein’s regime said the ousted president’s trial could start within two months.
”We see the need for an autonomous zone in the centre and south of Iraq,” Hakim told reporters in the central Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, adding that discussions are continuing on whether there should be one or more autonomous regions for the Shi’ites, who are estimated to make up 60% or more of Iraq’s 27-million population.
Some Shi’ite politicians have previously called for autonomy in the south and centre — notably the leader of the secular Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon darling now accused by Washington of passing on state secrets to arch-foe Iran.
But it is the first time that Hakim, a former exile in Iran who headed the victorious Shi’ite alliance in January elections, has lent such explicit support.
His comments came after meetings in Najaf on Wednesday with Shi’ite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who led his outlawed militia in a six-month uprising against the United States-led coalition last year.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, who heads the rival Shi’ite religious party Al-Dawa, already said last week that Sistani backed the principle of a federal Constitution for Iraq.
The emerging consensus between Kurds and Shi’ites on a federal Constitution leaves only the ousted Sunni Arab elite at odds on one of the key sticking points in the drafting of the new charter.
”The Sunnis are still apprehensive about federalism, but then they are discussing it, and officials from the US and United Kingdom embassies and the United Nations are briefing them as well as others,” a member of the drafting committee, Mahmud Othman, said.
Othman said representatives of all three communities met separately in Baghdad to discuss the remaining stumbling blocks in finalising a draft by Monday to be put to referendum in October.
Federalism is not the only controversy still dogging the negotiations just four days before the deadline.
The role of Islam and the relationship between state and religion is also at issue, with the Kurds and Shi’ites taking differing positions.
”It is not just identity of Iraq or decentralisation, but the formation of Iraq itself, the most sensitive issue, which is being debated,” government spokesperson Leith Kubba told reporters.
In violence on the ground, at least 16 people were killed, five of them in a roadside bombing in the key northern refinery town of Baiji.
A senior US commander ruled out any early withdrawal of US troops, saying the fledgling Iraqi security forces are still not up to the task of taking on the persistent insurgency.
”The earliest they’re going to be capable of running a counter-insurgency campaign is … next summer,” the Washington Post quoted the unidentified official as saying.
After more than 18 months in US custody, Saddam took a step closer to answering war-crimes charges in the dock with the announcement by a source close to the Iraqi special tribunal that a trial might open in less than two months.
”My best guess is that the trial could begin 45 days from the day the defence looks at the evidence,” the source said, adding that Saddam’s lawyers have already seen the prosecution case.
The court filed the first charges against the ousted president late last month in connection with the 1982 killing of 143 residents of a village north-east of Baghdad, where he had been the target of a failed assassination bid. — Sapa-AFP