|
BAGHDAD -- Two months of
political wrangling have slowed the naming of a new
Iraqi government so dramatically that legislators
will probably miss the long-established goal of
drafting a constitution by August, and elections
scheduled for December are likely to be put off
until mid-2006, leaders of the main political
parties said yesterday.
They spoke as Iraq's new 275-member National
Assembly convened for just the second time since it
was elected Jan. 30 and quickly descended into
acrimony.
Members clashed so fiercely that they adjourned
without naming a single government official. At one
point, the moderator ordered journalists to leave
the room for a ''secret session," and top
politicians, including interim Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi, later walked out in anger.
''What will we say to the citizens who sacrificed
their souls and cast their votes on Jan. 30? What is
the delay?" Hussein al-Sadr, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric
and member of Allawi's party, the Iraqi National
Accord, lamented during the session.
Some legislators contend the drawn-out talks on
forming a government since the January ballot are
safeguarding minorities by seeking to reflect all
the disparate groups in the country, but others say
the process is thwarting the will of the majority by
engaging in self-interested backroom debates on how
to divide up the Cabinet seats and other positions.
''I demand to expose the details before the Iraqi
people, so they'll be aware who is delaying the
democratic process," said Shatha al-Mousawi, a
member of the Shi'ite Islamist bloc that holds more
than half the seats.
Otherwise, she told the assembly, ''You are hiding
the enemies of the Iraqi people."
The one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that
at this rate, it would be surprising if the Assembly
met the August goal for drafting a permanent
constitution that was laid out in a blueprint
designed last year by US and Iraqi officials.
Under Iraq's transitional law, a two-thirds majority
of the assembly is required to name an interim
president and two vice presidents, who will then
appoint a prime minister and a Cabinet who must be
ratified by the assembly. This temporary government
is to run the country until the constitution is
approved and a permanent government is elected under
that constitution.
The assembly's most important task is to draft a new
constitution that will determine how Iraq is
governed in years to come, involving sensitive
issues such as the rights of ethnic minorities and
the role of religion in state affairs. The interim
law calls for a draft constitution to be written by
August, a nationwide referendum to be held in
October, and elections under that new constitution
for a permanent government by December. But the law
also allows the interim Assembly to delay the
process by six months. Pushing elections back to
mid-2006 could fuel instability and uncertainty.
With the committee that will draft the new
constitution not even named yet, legislators said
they would probably not make the August deadline.
Ali al-Dabagh, a Shi'ite from the United Iraqi
Alliance, the largest bloc in the Assembly, said
four months was ''not enough" time to draft the
constitution. Hajim al-Hasani, one of the few Sunni
members of the Assembly, said it would be ''very
difficult," as did Khosrow Jaff, of the Kurdish
Alliance.
Nearly every group has had a hand in the delay.
Until Monday, Kurdish and Shi'ite Arab leaders,
seeking to band together to form the two-thirds
majority needed to ratify the new government as well
as to draw in disaffected Sunni Muslim Arabs,
thought they had a deal on who would fill the roles
of president, vice presidents, and speaker of the
assembly.
They planned to hand the speaker post to a Sunni,
but at the last minute the Sunni politician all
sides had supported, interim President Ghazi al-Yawer,
balked, saying he would make a weak speaker because
his party holds just six seats.
Sunni members then asked for a 48-hour delay in
order to agree on a new candidate, hinting that they
favored Adnan al-Janabi, a member of the Assembly
faction led by the US-backed Allawi.
That threw another wrench in the works, said Sunni
legislator Mishaan al-Jabouri: Janabi said he would
accept the post only with Allawi's blessing, and
Allawi would agree only if the Shi'ite and Kurd bloc
promised other key posts to people in his party,
which fared poorly in the January ballot and has
been virtually shut out of the talks.
Finally, more than two hours late, Assembly members
filed into the meeting room yesterday with the
modest goal of choosing a committee to draft the
assembly's internal bylaws. Within minutes, though,
angry words broke out on the floor over whether to
give the Sunnis the delay they had requested to
agree among themselves on a speaker candidate, or to
force a vote immediately.
The moderator broke in and announced, ''We will now
have a secret session and we demand that the media
leave the hall."
Within seconds, in an echo of sanitized broadcasts
from the Saddam Hussein-era, Iraqiya state-run
television went dark. When screens flickered back
on, footage of the meeting room was replaced with a
popular folk singer and a band of traditional Arabic
instruments performing the national anthem, ''My
Homeland, My Homeland."
In a departure from Hussein's times, though, calls
quickly flooded the station from Iraqis who
complained that the Assembly was neglecting the
country's problems -- especially after Allawi walked
out, citing ''other obligations" which Jabouri, the
Sunni legislator, said included a trip out of the
country.
''I wonder what other obligations are more important
than the National Assembly," the Iraqiya announcer
told the audience.
Outside the hall, political leaders blamed each
other for the delay in naming the government.
''We totally blame the Kurds," said Dabagh.
Sunnis blamed Shi'ites for trying to force
candidates down their throats; Shi'ites blamed
Sunnis for boycotting the elections and thus giving
Kurds disproportionate clout; Kurds blamed the
others for refusing to give them their due.
Sa'ad Jawad Qindeel, a United Iraqi Alliance member,
blamed the interim law approved by former US
occupation chief L. Paul Bremer III for requiring a
66 percent majority to form the government, rather
than a simple majority.
A rare voice defending the process was that of Adil
Abdel Mahdi, a top United Iraqi Alliance leader, who
said, ''If this was an oppressive country, we would
have gotten a government in one hour. It would have
been a toy government."
The Kurds and Shi'ites said they had agreed to name
a Shi'ite, Ibrahim Jaafari, as prime minister, and
make Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani president. They
also said they had reached agreement on the main
issues dividing them: Kurds want to take a larger
portion of revenues, incorporate the ethnically
mixed city of Kirkuk into their northern autonomous
region, and keep their militia, demands the Shi'ites
oppose as threats to Iraq's unity and Arab identity.
But yesterday made clear that the two most powerful
groups had deferred rather than resolved the
disputes, since neither side could cite a single
compromise on the points.
Party leaders agreed to reconvene on Sunday. Abdul
Aziz al-Hakim, the cleric who heads the Shi'ite
bloc, told Al Arabiya television that his group
would wait until then for fractious Sunnis to agree
on a candidate, but added a parting shot: If the
Sunnis miss the deadline, the assembly will choose a
speaker by majority vote.
www.boston.com
Top |
® 