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BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 30 - At least two of the 15
Sunni Arabs proposed as members of the committee
that will write Iraq's permanent constitution have
been accused of being senior members of Saddam
Hussein's Baath Party, and two others have openly
declared themselves strong supporters of the party.
The issue threatens to add a volatile new element to
negotiations on the constitution, already facing
major disagreements on questions like how much
autonomy should be granted to the Kurdish north and
what role Islam should play in Iraqi law.
The Baath Party, dominated by members of the
country's Sunni Arab minority, brutalized and exiled
many current members of the Iraqi National Assembly,
which is likely to consider the proposed slate of
Sunnis early next week.
Under Iraq's provisional law, a new constitution
must be written by Aug. 15 or the government must
ask for an extension of up to six months. Once a
constitution is written, it must be submitted to a
national referendum.
The consortium of Sunni organizations that submitted
the list had agreed not to include former senior
Baath Party officials, who by law cannot hold top
positions in the Iraqi government. But objections
have been raised over at least two of those on the
list, Mijbel Sheik Isa and Haseeb Aref, said Bahaa
al-Aaraji, a Shiite who serves as coordinator of the
constitutional committee.
When contacted by telephone, Mr. Isa denied that he
had ever been a member of the Baath Party, and he
said that while Mr. Aref had once been a member, he
had never been in a senior position.
"All the candidates comply with the terms of
membership," Mr. Isa said. "We don't have any of the
damned Baath Party members among us."
He added, "We told the committee that we will not
change any of the names and the list would stay as
it is."
Mr. Aaraji said, though, that because of the
accusations, the committee had decided to submit all
of the proposed names to Iraq's de-Baathification
commission for vetting. The development has raised
the ire of Sunnis inside and outside the committee;
some dismiss as unimportant whether the nominees are
former Baathists of any rank.
It is unclear who raised the objections.
"So what if Mijbel was a Baathist?" said Abdul
Rahman Sayyid alNaemi, one of a small number of
Sunnis voted into the assembly after Arab Sunnis
largely boycotted the January elections. "He didn't
commit a crime against the Iraqi people."
"We must get over this issue," he added, "because we
don't have much time."
The de-Baathification committee itself has been a
subject of debate in Iraq, with some officials
contending that prior Baath Party membership of any
kind should not disqualify people from taking part
in government.
The chairman of the constitutional committee, Sheik
Humam Hamoudi, made it clear that he was far from
pleased to learn that some proposed members may have
been former Baathists. "We call them Saddamists,"
Mr. Hamoudi said, noting that when the party was in
power it killed many Iraqis.
But he added that he thought that most of the 15
Sunnis had not been Baathists, and he drew a fine
distinction about the impact the new accusations
could have on the writing of the constitution. "It
will be a problem," he said, "but I don't think it
will be an obstacle."
The existing committee has 55 members, all drawn
from the National Assembly. Nearly all are Shiites,
the majority in the population, or Kurds. Both
groups were oppressed during Mr. Hussein's rule.
Iraqi government officials and their American
backers have labored for weeks to add a number of
Arab Sunnis to the committee, largely in hopes of
giving the constitution legitimacy in the eyes of
the Sunnis, who are now considered the wellspring of
the insurgency.
But interviews with some of the proposed Sunni
members reinforce the notion that the list may
include Baathist supporters. One of the 15, Saleh
Mutlak, a soil scientist who made his fortune as an
agricultural entrepreneur during Mr. Hussein's rule,
said he was expelled from the party in the 1970's
for opposing government decisions. But he also made
clear where his sympathies lay.
"I still see the Baath Party as the best party we
have seen," Dr. Mutlak said. "If you compare them,
they are much better than the parties that are
governing the country now."
He added, "I don't say that the Baathists were
ideal," but he proposed that in Iraq today, a
dictator who ran "a fair government" would be more
effective than a democratic system. "I feel it is
better than the democracy that we have now where
everybody is killing everybody," said Dr. Mutlak,
who is a member of the Sunni-led National Dialogue
Council.
Another of the proposed Sunni members is Kamal
Hamdoun, the leader of the Iraqi Bar Association. He
said that although he left the Baath Party in 1991,
he did so only because he was too busy with his
profession.
"I really believe in the Baath Party," said Mr.
Hamdoun, who is originally from Mosul. Still, Mr.
Hamdoun said, he did not serve in any significant
posts in the party or in Mr. Hussein's government,
aside from holding an elected seat in Parliament
from 1980 to 1988.
Not everyone on the Sunni list has acknowledged or
suspected connections to the Baath Party. Ayad
alSamaray, assistant general secretary of the Iraqi
Islamic Party, was driven into exile by the
Baathists in 1980 because of his Islamic activism.
But he said the objections over former Baathists had
been raised only to delay membership on the
committee by the Sunnis, even as some sections of
the constitution were already being written by the
current 55 members.
Mr. Hamoudi, chairman of the committee, confirmed
that certain sections were being written. But the
full committee, including the Sunnis, will debate
all sections of the document before it is completed,
he said.
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedy and Ali Adeeb contributed
reporting for this article.
www.nytimes.com
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