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U.S. and Iraq to Plan Military Transfer;
Iraqis Push to Meet Constitution Deadline
2.8.2005
By CRAIG S. SMITH and DEXTER FILKINS
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BAGHDAD, Iraq, -
As Iraqi leaders on Monday reaffirmed their decision
to finish writing the country's constitution by the
middle of the month, the American ambassador here
publicly outlined the process for a gradual American
troop withdrawal.
Speaking in his first news conference here, the new
ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the American
military would hand over control of specific areas
to Iraqi forces and "withdraw its own units from
these areas." He declined to say which Iraqi cities
American soldiers would leave first but said he had
formed a committee with Iraqi leaders to draw up a
detailed withdrawal plan.
"After this transfer occurs in more and more areas,
there will be a smaller need for coalition forces,
and elements of the multinational forces will leave
Iraq," the ambassador said.
Iraqi forces have been given sole control over very
few areas of the country. A recent report prepared
by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld concluded
that only a small percentage of Iraqi military units
were capable of fighting on their own.
Mr. Khalilzad's remarks were a public reminder to
Iraqis that the Bush administration is moving ahead
with plans to reduce the number of foreign troops
here. And they were the latest demonstration of the
highly visible role that he has played in the weeks
since his arrival. Before then, Mr. Khalilzad was
the ambassador to Afghanistan, where he was deeply
engaged in the affairs of the country. He seems to
be bringing that philosophy to Iraq as well,
departing from American officials' recent custom of
staying in the background while Iraqis increasingly
take the lead.
He played an active part in pushing Iraqi leaders
toward their decision on Sunday to stick to an Aug.
15 deadline for drafting a new constitution, urging
them to set aside any issues that could not be
resolved by that date.
The Bush administration has been keen to keep the
democratic process here on track, as a means to
drain anger from the insurgency and also to help set
the conditions for an American troop draw-down.
In another appearance on Monday, Mr. Khalilzad urged
the members of the constitutional drafting committee
to set aside their differences and strike a deal. "I
encourage them to move forward in a spirit of
compromise, flexibility and good will," he said in a
speech before Iraq's National Assembly.
Sectarian violence continued to punctuate the
country's political tensions. Eleven bodies were
found in southwest Baghdad on Monday, most shot but
two beheaded. Their identities were not immediately
clear, though the men were of varying ages and many
had the long beards worn by conservative Muslims.
One weeping relative of a victim was photographed
holding the decapitated head of a man as it lay on
the back of a flatbed truck, according to Reuters.
An Interior Ministry official, Brig. Abdul Salam
Abdul Latif, was killed and two of his guards
wounded when gunmen attacked his car on a highway in
eastern Baghdad, the ministry said. About 40 miles
south of Kirkuk, an Iraqi soldier was killed and six
others were wounded by a roadside bomb.
Under a framework agreed to by Iraqis last year, the
constitution will be put to a vote of the National
Assembly, followed by a nationwide referendum on
Oct. 15. Nationwide elections to elect a new
National Assembly to a full term are scheduled for
Dec. 15.
The danger, expressed by some Iraqi leaders, is that
there is not enough time until Aug. 15 for the
constitutional committee to resolve several
contentious issues that are central to Iraq's
identity. A flawed constitution, they say, could
open the door to civil war.
Some of the trickiest issues involve the future of
the Kurds, who predominate in the mountains of
northern Iraq. The Kurds have enjoyed a wide degree
of autonomy since the end of the Persian Gulf war in
1991, and they are eager to preserve - and even
expand - their prerogatives against what they view
as a potentially predatory central government.
On Monday, Kurdish leaders said they were prepared
to withdraw their support of an Iraqi charter if it
does not satisfy their concerns on a range of
difficult issues, including expanding the geographic
breadth of their autonomy and reversing years of
expulsions and ethnic killings in areas of Iraq that
were formerly Kurdish.
"If the constitution does not respect the basic
rights of the Kurdish people in Iraq, the Kurdish
region will vote against the referendum," said
Barham Salih, a senior Kurdish leader and Iraq's
planning minister.
It is not an idle threat. Under the rules set up
last year, the Iraqi constitution would fail if
two-thirds of the voters in 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces
vote against it in October - and Kurds are a
majority in exactly three provinces.
Among the other unresolved issues is the role of
religion in public and political life. Some Shiite
leaders want the country to be called the Iraqi
Islamic Republic, and they want to designate Islam
as the main source of the country's legislation.
Some Kurdish and other secular Iraqi leaders want to
make sure that such language is not used to strip
women and others of their basic rights.
It is such fundamental disagreements that prompted
American diplomats to try to persuade the Iraqis to
hold fast to the Aug. 15 deadline, even at the cost
of leaving some of those big issues out of the
constitution altogether.
But Mr. Salih, the Kurdish leader, suggested that
some of those disagreements may be too large to
paper over.
Without acceptance of the Kurds' basic demands,
"there will be no agreement," he said. "You cannot
camouflage it."
www.nytimes.com
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