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BAGHDAD, June 5 - Breaking an impasse that had
threatened to delay the drafting of a new
constitution, a mostly Shiite and Kurdish
constitutional committee met with and formally
accepted today 15 Sunni Arab politicians who had
been lobbying to join the committee.
The progress on the political front came as
insurgents stepped up their campaign to drive Muslim
diplomats from the country. Gunmen opened fire in
the morning on a car carrying the top diplomat from
Bahrain, Hassan al-Ansary, injuring him, while
another group of insurgents fired on a convoy
carrying the top diplomat from Pakistan. No one was
injured in the second attack.
The assaults came two days after the top Egyptian
diplomat here was kidnapped while driving alone in
western Baghdad at night. The American and Iraqi
governments have been pressing Arab countries to
send ambassadors to Iraq and upgrade their
diplomatic ties here, a move that would help bestow
legitimacy on the Iraqi government. Laith Kubba, a
spokesman for the government, said at a news
conference today that it was obvious the insurgents
were trying to hamper any such efforts.
Insurgents also opened fire on a bus carrying female
employees to Baghdad International Airport, killing
at least four of them and injuring at least three.
In the fortified convention center by the Tigris
River, the head of the constitutional committee,
Humam al-Hamoudi, announced in the morning that the
committee had decided to accept 15 names offered up
by Sunni Arab groups as co-writers of the
constitution. The move gives the Sunnis a greater
voice in the drafting, since there were only two
Sunni Arabs on the 55-member committee.
The White House has been urging the Shiites and
Kurds, who dominate the government following the
January elections, to give the Sunnis a larger role
in the political process, in hopes that this will
help co-opt the Sunni-led insurgency.
In late June, the committee agreed to accept 15
Sunnis as full members and to take on 10 others in
an advisory role. Various Sunni groups gave a list
of 15 names. But members of the committee began
raising objections in the last week, saying some of
the 15 may be former senior Baath Party officials.
Mr. Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite cleric, said the
committee had decided it did not immediately matter
that the Sunnis had suspect political backgrounds.
It was more important to have the Sunni point of
view aired during the writing of the constitution,
he said. He added that the committee had sent the 15
names to a commission responsible for keeping senior
Baathists out of the government, but that the
commission had not sent back any replies.
"If we were talking about ministries, names might be
more important," Mr. Hamoudi said at a news
conference. "But since it's a committee, having the
views is more important than the names."
The committee has agreed with Sunni leaders that the
constitution will only be drafted by consensus,
meaning that the 15 Sunnis will have considerable
power. In the meeting today, the committee began
showing the Sunnis the parts of the constitution
that had already been written. The tough issues -
the definition of a federal system, the Arab
identity of Iraq and the legal role of Islam - have
yet to be tackled.
It is unclear how successful the working
relationship will be among all the groups on the
committee. Several of the 15 Sunnis have expressed
relatively hard-line views, including support for
the Baath Party, and assert that the Sunni Arabs are
not a demographic minority in Iraq, as they
generally are believed to be. Until the fall of
Saddam Hussein, the Sunni Arabs, who make up about a
fifth of the population, had governed Iraq from the
time the British installed them as proxy rulers here
in the aftermath of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire
in World War I.
Mr. Hamoudi said he fully expected the constitution
to be finished by the end of the month. The National
Assembly has until Aug. 15 to approve a first draft
of the constitution, or to delay the process by up
to six months. If the timeline holds, a national
referendum on the constitution will take place on
Oct. 15, and elections for a full-term government
will be held in December.
www.nytimes.com
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