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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni negotiators said Sunday
they expect the draft constitution drawn up by the
Shiite and Kurdish blocs to be "rammed through"
parliament despite their objections and last-ditch
U.S. efforts to secure a compromise.
Sunni negotiator Sadoun Zubaydi said he expected the
National Assembly to rubber-stamp the proposal.
"They have told us it will be rammed through whether
we like it or not," he said.
In a sign of the deepening crisis, five of the top
Sunni Arabs in Iraq's coalition government _
including a deputy prime minister _ spoke out late
Saturday against the draft. They said they objected
to 13 provisions in the document.
Although Cabinet members are not directly involved
in the constitutional talks, the declaration
indicated that Iraq's fragile government could fall
apart if the draft proposal drawn up by the Shiite
and Kurdish bloc is sent to the voters without the
agreement of the Sunni negotiating team.
Sunnis account for only 20 percent of Iraq's 27
million people, but they are in a strong position to
derail the constitution. If two-thirds of voters in
any three provinces reject the charter in the
referendum scheduled for Oct. 15, the constitution
will be defeated, and Sunnis have the majority in at
least four provinces.
After two months of talks, negotiators for the
Shiite-Kurd bloc and the Sunnis remain divided over
fundamental issues that include: whether Iraq should
be turned into a federal state or decentralized by
granting more power to provincial authorities; how
the country's oil wealth will be divided; whether
members of Saddam' Hussein's banned Baath Party
should be purged; and whether Iraq will be
considered an Arab or Islamic nation.
The deadlock in the talks came despite frantic
efforts by the United States to secure a political
consensus that would hopefully deliver a massive
vote in favor of the charter _ taking the steam out
of the Sunni-led insurgency and enabling a drawdown
of U.S. troops to start next year. U.S. Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad met with various negotiators and
parliament's speaker, Hajim al-Hassani, late
Saturday trying to broker wording acceptable to the
Sunnis.
"The demands from the Sunni Arabs continued until a
very late hour," Jawad al Maliki, a Shiite member of
the drafting committee, told state-run Iraqiya TV on
Sunday. "They demanded that we do nothing unless we
accept all their demands. So we insisted on refusing
that."
On Saturday, after a flurry of final proposals and
counterproposals for amending the document, the
Shiite-Kurdish alliance said it would hand the draft
on Sunday to the 275-seat National Assembly. The
alliance enjoys an overwhelming majority in
parliament due to the Sunni boycott of last
elections last January.
Al-Hassani said Shiites and Kurds sought to address
Sunni concerns by offering Friday to put off
consideration of federalism's details until after a
new parliament is elected in December, when Sunnis
are expected to expand on the 17 seats they
currently hold. Shiites and Kurds also acknowledged
that many members of Saddam's party were not
criminals and wouldn't be covered by a charter
provision on purging Baathists from government and
public life, he said.
Al-Hassani said he planned to convene the
legislature Sunday, a workday here, but no hour was
announced. It was not immediately clear whether
lawmakers would vote on the alliance's proposal or
simply refer it to voters for ratification in the
referendum in October.
Sunni leaders said their people should oppose the
charter peacefully by voting "no" in the referendum.
"The (Sunni) bloc should now convene a general
conference to decide how to proceed," Zubaydi said.
"Boycotting the referendum and parliamentary
elections (in December) would be a lose-lose
proposition. Our hope will be in the next parliament
that will hopefully be more balanced than this one."
AP
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