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BAGHDAD (Reuters)
— Iraq's main Sunni Arab political bloc demanded on
Tuesday it head a parliamentary committee to amend
the constitution, a charter Sunnis say gives Shiites
and Kurds too much power and eventually will split
the country.
Iraq's parliament is set to meet on Wednesday for
its first day of normal business since it was
elected in December to discuss forming a committee
to review the constitution — one of postwar Iraq's
most sensitive sectarian issues.
Keen to bring the minority Sunni community into the
political process, the United States brokered a deal
among Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups last year
that allows for a parliamentary committee to review
the charter.
US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad mediated the deal
shortly before an October referendum on the
constitution as a means of defusing Sunni opposition
that risked scuppering the charter.
The ballot ratified it in the end but came close to
a veto as a result of strong 'No' votes in
predominantly Sunni provinces.
Sunnis, who dominated under former President Saddam
Hussein and now are the backbone of an insurgency,
fear the charter's provisions for regional autonomy
may give Kurds and Shiites control over Iraq's oil
reserves and could break up the country.
"It's a matter of logic that the Iraqi Accordance
Front heads the committee that will revise the
constitution in parliament because the demand of
rewriting the constitution was a demand made by the
front," Iyad Samarrai, a senior official of the
front, the main Sunni parliamentary group, told
Reuters.
Under the deal, parliament must form a committee
which will have four months to come up with
recommendations on how to amend the constitution.
Deep divisions
Reviewing the constitution could expose again the
country's deep ethnic and sectarian divisions as
Shiite Prime Minister-designate Nuri Maliki strives
to form a government of national unity seen as the
best hope to avert a civil war.
The Shiites, who have a near-majority in the
275-seat parliament, have insisted there can be no
major changes to the charter, which they backed as a
symbol of Shiite empowerment.
The Kurds, who have had effective autonomy in
northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, are intent on
cementing that separation. The Shiites have also
given themselves the option of forging a similar
federal region in the oil-rich south.
That could leave Sunnis with a rump state in the
middle, where little oil has been found and the land
is mostly desert.
Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the
world next to Saudi Arabia.
Sunnis, suspicious that the ruling Shiite Islamists
are too close to neighbouring Shiite, non-Arab Iran,
also want the constitution to stress Iraq's Arab
identity.
Samarrai, whose bloc backed the Shiite Alliance's
nomination of Maliki for prime minister last month
and helped end a four-month deadlock, acknowledged
there could be tough negotiations ahead: "It could
be difficult because there are many disputes about
the articles." If any changes are made to the
constitution, they will have to be approved by
parliament and then in another referendum.
Reuters
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