Iraqis Present Charter Despite Sunni Dissent

BAGHDAD —  Iraqi lawmakers announced Sunday that they had finished writing the country’s first democratic constitution, but minority Sunni Arabs involved in the negotiations rejected the final draft, setting the stage for a divisive political struggle when the charter goes before voters Oct. 15.

Formal submission of the document to the nation’s transitional National Assembly brought a degree of resolution to weeks of often-bitter negotiations, and Iraqi politicians were quick to emphasize the positive.

Flanked by Kurdish and Shiite Arab politicians, plus a few Sunni Arabs, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, called the constitution “the first of its kind” in the Arab or Muslim world.

“Now it’s up to the Iraqi people to accept or refuse it,” he said.

However, none of the 15 Sunni Arab representatives on the constitutional drafting committee agreed to sign the final document, and Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers chose not to put the charter up for a vote in the National Assembly.

“I think this constitution will worsen everything in the country and will increase violence,” said Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni negotiator. “We think the citizens will reject it.”

However, some Sunnis held out hope that negotiations could continue on the wording of the constitution, particularly since the National Assembly would not be voting on the document.

Iraqis extended their deadline for writing the charter several times. The dispute over the draft constitution followed months of efforts by the Bush administration and Iraqi officials to bring Sunnis into the country’s political process, in part to dampen support for the Sunni-led insurgency.

In a statement from his ranch near Crawford, Texas, President Bush praised the drafters of the constitution as an “inspiration to all who share the universal values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.” He also acknowledged that “some Sunnis have expressed reservations about various provisions of the constitution,” but Bush saw those objections as signs of progress in a former dictatorship.

“We’re watching a political process unfold,” he said.

Bush and other top U.S. officials were so effusive and open about their hope the Sunnis would ultimately sign on to the constitution that the Sunni refusal raised renewed questions about Bush’s policies in Iraq, and could become politically damaging for the White House.

Bush placed a rare phone call last week to a top Shiite official to encourage more negotiations with Sunnis. After the call, Shiite negotiators offered a last-minute, though ultimately unsuccessful, compromise designed to ease Sunni concerns about the proposed federalist system.

Bush’s statement Sunday was a rare acknowledgment that not everything was going smoothly in Iraq’s political rebirth and was a shift in his language, which usually adheres to the more cautious words coming from Pentagon and State Department officials who have tried to dampen expectations.

The draft constitution opens with a preamble that, in lofty language evoking the Arab passion for flowery prose, pays homage to Iraq’s rich history and contributions to the world. “We the sons of Mesopotamia, land of the prophets, resting place of the holy imams, the leaders of civilization and the creators of the alphabet, the cradle of arithmetic ... newly arisen from our disasters and looking with confidence to the future ... are determined -- men and women, old and young -- to respect the rule of law.... “

The sweeping document declares that Iraqis will have equal rights and should not be discriminated against based on sex, ethnicity, religion, race or belief. At the same time, the charter establishes Iraq to be an Islamic country, prohibiting any law from violating the religion’s basic tenets. The document does not make clear how clashes between sometimes-contradictory goals would be resolved.

The draft condemns atrocities of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime and pledges that the new Iraqi government will combat terrorism, rare wording in a country’s founding document, but reflecting the nation’s ongoing violence.

Controversial issues, such as how to divide Iraq’s oil revenues and the exact mechanisms by which provinces can form semi-independent federal regions, were tabled for now, to be resolved by next year’s National Assembly.

Vague language over whether citizens can take domestic issues before either a civil court or religious authorities left some activists concerned that women, particularly in rural regions, might be forced by families to accept Islamic law, which could be more restrictive on such issues as divorce, child custody and inheritance.

If the draft constitution is ratified in the Oct. 15 referendum, elections will be held Dec. 15 to select a new National Assembly. However, if the charter is defeated -- rejected by a majority of all voters or two-thirds of those in at least three provinces -- the current transitional National Assembly will be disbanded, new elections held, and the process of writing a constitution will start over again.

The rejection of the constitution by voters could become the prime goal of Sunni Arab political leaders, who decried the draft as a recipe for Iraq’s disintegration. Even with its vague language on the creation of a federalist system that would give regions a degree of autonomy, some Sunnis fear that Kurds could seek independence in the north and Shiites could come under the sway of Iran in the south.

Sunni voters largely boycotted the January election that determined the makeup of the parliament, and therefore the drafting committee. But Sunni representatives were included in the constitutional talks.

They staunchly opposed language enshrining the right of provinces to form federal states, as well as a clause condemning Hussein’s Baath Party, in which Sunnis held most of the leadership positions. Sunnis fear that ordinary people who were forced to join the party could face discrimination in matters such as jobs and housing.

When Sunnis rejected a last-minute compromise to defer the details of federalism, Shiite and Kurdish negotiators concluded that their differences were irreconcilable and decided to move on without consensus.

The Sunnis, according to Kurdish negotiator Mahmoud Othman, could have accepted what he thought was a reasonable final offer.

“They made it all black and white,” he said.

The lack of Sunni Arab support may turn the October referendum into a clash over the shape of the future Iraqi state, with one of the nation’s three main ethnic and religious groups striving to torpedo the visions of the other two.

Sunni leaders are already pledging to marshal the necessary votes in three provinces to reject the constitution. “Regardless of how things will turn out, we will stay a vital part of the political process -- starting with the active participation in the coming elections,” said Sheik Abdel Nasser Janabi, a leading Sunni negotiator.

The Sunnis hold large majorities in two of Iraq’s 18 provinces, and two other more diverse provinces promise to become political, and possibly literal, battleground states.

But some Shiite and Kurdish leaders Sunday described the Sunni call for a rejection campaign as a positive sign: Despite their differences, they said, the Sunni leaders remained dedicated to a peaceful political process. An election campaign by the Sunnis would require that they go to the polls in large numbers, which they didn’t do in January.

But a referendum fight could be a no-win situation for the nation as a whole. If the constitution is rejected, Shiites and Kurds could become more deeply embittered toward the Sunnis, already viewed by many of them as their longtime oppressors. And ratification of the constitution would deepen the Sunni sense of alienation, convincing many of them that peaceful opposition is fruitless and perhaps swelling the ranks of the Sunni-led insurgency.

In a ceremony at Talabani’s presidential compound inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, where negotiations over the constitution were carried out, lawmakers sought to overcome the Sunni absence by projecting a big-tent image of an all-inclusive constitution. A phalanx of top politicians -- Shiites, Kurds and some Sunnis, men and women -- stood shoulder to shoulder.

“The ones who wrote this constitution are the sons of this country,” said Humam Hamoodi, a Shiite cleric and head of the drafting committee. “All [participants] have reservations, but everyone accepts it.”

But the presence of just a handful of Sunni Arabs, some of them peripheral aides to the top players, spoke volumes about the failure to achieve the consensus that all sides said was a requirement months ago when 15 additional Sunnis were brought into the negotiations.

Vice President Ghazi Ajil Yawer, the top Sunni Arab in government, pointedly skipped the ceremony. When asked about Yawer’s absence, Talabani said with a deadpan expression: “He’s sick.” The statement brought laughter from several of the politicians present. Aides to Yawer later said that he did not support the constitution.

National Assembly Speaker Hachim Hassani, a Sunni who quit his own party rather than leave the government in January, attended and spoke, but looked genuinely uncomfortable with his role.

“There are parts [of the constitution] that I myself have reservations about,” he said. “The important thing is to think about the future of the country.”

Afterward, off-camera, Hassani spoke more frankly. He predicted that the constitution would face strong resistance in Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland.

“It’s not going to be easy to go and convince the people,” he said. “They had demands, and many of their minimum demands were not met.”

He charged that Shiite and Kurdish leaders had used high-handed tactics during negotiations over the charter, exploiting the small presence of Sunnis in the transitional government.

“They won the last election, and the Sunnis did not participate. So this was an opportunity for them to get whatever they want,” Hassani said. “If I was in their camp ... I would have been much more generous to win the Sunnis into my camp. I don’t think they played the politics very well.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The Preamble

The following is the preamble to the draft constitution for Iraq presented Sunday to the transitional National Assembly:

We the sons of Mesopotamia, land of the prophets, resting place of the holy imams, the leaders of civilization and the creators of the alphabet, the cradle of arithmetic: On our land, the first law put in place by mankind was written; in our nation, the most noble era of justice in the politics of nations was laid down; on our soil, the followers of the prophet and the saints prayed, the philosophers and the scientists theorized and the writers and poets created.

Recognizing God’s right upon us; obeying the call of our nation and our citizens; responding to the call of our religious and national leaders and the insistence of our great religious authorities and our leaders and our reformers, our patriotic forces and politicians, amid international solidarity with our friends and supporters; we went by the millions for the first time in our history to the ballot box, men and women, young and old, on Jan. 30, 2005, remembering the pains of the despotic band’s sectarian oppression; inspired by the suffering of Iraq’s martyrs -- Sunni and Shiite, Arab, Kurd and Turkmen, and the remaining brethren in all communities -- inspired by the injustice against the holy cities and the south in the Shabaani uprising and deeply affected by the agonies of the mass graves, and the marshes and Dujayl and so on; recalling the agonies of the national oppression in the massacres of Halabja, Barzan, Anfal and against the Faili Kurds; inspired by the tragedies of the Turkmen in Bashir, and the suffering of the people of the western region by killing its leaders, symbols and sheiks, and displacing its well-educated people, and destroying its intellectual and cultural resources; work hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, to create a new Iraq, Iraq of the future, without sectarianism, racial strife, regionalism, discrimination or isolation.

Terrorism and takfir [declaring someone an infidel] did not divert us from moving forward to build a nation of law. Sectarianism and racism did not stop us from marching together to strengthen our national unity, set ways to peacefully transfer power, adopt a manner to fairly distribute wealth and give equal opportunity to all.

We the people of Iraq, newly arisen from our disasters and looking with confidence to the future through a democratic, federal, republican, multiparty system, are determined -- men and women, old and young -- to respect the rule of law, reject the policy of aggression, pay attention to women and their rights, the elderly and their cares, the children and their affairs, spread the culture of diversity and defuse terrorism.

We are the people of Iraq, who in all our forms and groupings undertake to establish our union freely and by choice, to learn yesterday’s lessons for tomorrow, and to write down this permanent constitution from the high values and ideals of the heavenly messages and the developments of science and human civilization, and to adhere to this constitution, which shall preserve for Iraq its free union of people, land and sovereignty.

Source: Times staff and wire services

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Times staff writers Saif Rasheed, Shamil Aziz and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and Peter Wallsten in Crawford contributed to this report.