Iraq roped in disenchanted Sunni Arabs for last-minute talks on Monday on thorny issues dogging the drafting of the Constitution just hours before a deadline to complete the charter expires.
”All the three key groups — the Shi’ites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs — are meeting at about 10am [6am GMT] today for what could be the last-ditch effort to strike a deal on the Constitution,” a source close to the negotiations said.
After missing the original August 15 deadline to submit the country’s first post-Saddam Hussein charter to Parliament, Iraqi leaders secured an extension allowing them to postpone an agreement until midnight on Monday.
But sharp differences remain on issues including a federal structure for Iraq, the role of Islam and the sharing of national oil wealth, raising the prospect of another parliamentary vote to extend for a fresh date.
”There was a meeting that went up to late last night … but no breakthrough was achieved,” the source said.
The failure to arrive at a consensus has raised the possibility that Iraq may once again seek an extension to the deadline.
”If the text is not handed to the National Assembly by the deadline … one choice is to ask for another one-week extension or the other is to dissolve Parliament,” Leith Kubba, spokesperson for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, told reporters on Sunday.
However, he also told CNN that an incomplete Constitution could be presented to Parliament.
”It is a possibility they can submit a draft with most articles agreed on, and maybe leave one or two articles for further debate. [There is] no need to hold the whole process just for the sake of one article,” he said.
Kurdish panellists voiced optimism the draft could be ready by the deadline.
”I think the Shi’ites and Kurds will come to an agreement,” said Mahmud Othman, a Kurdish negotiator. ”If the Sunnis come on board, it will be good.”
The Sunnis have complained of being left out of the negotiations and that a deal was being struck between the Shi’ites and the Kurds.
They reject any notion of federalism, although their negotiating position is weak since they hold few parliamentary seats after largely boycotting January’s elections.
But the Sunnis warned that if they are sidelined, the charter could well be defeated in a referendum due to be held in mid-October, ahead of fresh elections in December.
Under Iraq’s interim law, the charter will fail if two-thirds of voters in any three provinces reject it. Sunni Arabs form a majority in at least three provinces: Al-Anbar, Ninevah and Salaheddin.
Intense pressure
Negotiators said there was intense United States pressure to reach an agreement by Monday as Washington sees the charter as key to Iraq’s political transition and could pave the way for a withdrawal of foreign forces.
They said US officials were pressuring Kurds to give up demands for self-determination and oil ownership in a bid to reach a deal with the majority Shi’ites.
Kurdish demands for self-determination would effectively have given their de facto autonomous northern region the chance to secede from Iraq at a later date. However, Kurdish leaders on Saturday offered a compromise.
But Kurdish ambitions to have the oil centre of Kirkuk included within their territory and to seek a degree of control over the region’s oil reserves could be more difficult to assuage.
Installing Islam as the country’s main source of legislation and allowing clerics a political role, as demanded by the conservative Shi’ite bloc, are also stumbling blocks.
The US dropped its opposition to enshrining Islam as ”the” main source of legislation and not just ”a” main source in an effort to please the majority Shi’ites. But the secular Kurds strongly oppose the move, arguing that it contravenes women’s rights and the country’s secularist traditions.
Two US soldiers were killed near Tal Afar, west of the northern city of Mosul, late on Sunday, taking total US military losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 1 860, according to a tally based on Pentagon figures.
In Washington, Senator Chuck Hagel, a top member of President George Bush’s Republican Party, told Fox News the US ”should start figuring out how we get out of there”.
”I think our involvement there has destabilised the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilisation will occur,” said Hagel, who is regarded as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. — Sapa-AFP