Shias oppose mention of Kurd self-rule: UN resolution on Iraq
BAGHDAD, June 8: The political leadership of Iraq's Shias and Kurds sparred on Tuesday over the wording of a new UN Security Council resolution recognizing Iraq's sovereignty
, with the political battle threatening to bring down the caretaker government.
Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani issued a joint statement warning Iraq's interim constitution, or fundamental law, should be mentioned in the new UN resolution as they sought legitimacy for the cause of Kurdish self-rule.
The country's ethnic fault lines resurfaced as the world's diplomats said they had all but clinched a deal in New York on a new Security Council resolution, giving the stamp of approval to a sovereign Iraq.
Iraq's 15-million-strong Shia community are up in arms over the fundamental law's guarantee of Kurdish semi-autonomy in the northern provinces of Dahuk, Arbil and Sulaimaniyah.
Top Shia leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani warned the United Nations against any reference to the charter in its resolution. Any mention of the interim constitution "is illegal and is rejected by a majority of Iraqis", Ayatollah Sistani's office said in a statement.
"Any attempt to give it legitimacy by mentioning it in the resolution ... could have dangerous consequences," the statement read. Ayatollah Sistani, a reclusive who has the power to summon thousands on to the streets in protest, has been ticked off by the virtual self-rule granted to the Kurds in the fundamental law.
When the resolution was adopted on March 8, Ayatollah Sistani and other Shia politicians voiced anger over the fact Islam was not the sole basis of the charter and that Kurds were granted an implicit veto over a permanent constitution to be drafted next year.
Around 2,000 Shias marched through the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday heeding Ayatollah Sistani's latest call. Waving posters of the elderly leader, they headed from Al Shaab stadium and congregated on the eastern side of the Tigris river across from the Coalition Provisional Authority's headquarters.
The crowd denounced the interim constitution as an instrument of the United States, drafted behind closed doors with the aid of the US-picked and now dissolved Governing Council.
The Kurds, estimated to make up anywhere from 15 to 20 per cent of Iraq's population, are determined to keep their hard-earned privileges. "We want the fundamental law to be mentioned in the UN Security Council resolution," Talabani and Barzani said, in the statement published in Al Taakhi newspaper of Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party.
"We want to be sure that it will be the basis of government before and after elections" scheduled for January. The government elected early next year will rule until a permanent constitution is drafted and approved at the end of 2005.
"We want to obtain assurances in this interim period so that we can participate actively in the transitional government," the statement read. "In case the law is not applied or is suppressed, there will not be any choice for the Kurdistan government but to stop participating in the central government and its institutions, to boycott elections and forbid members of the central government from entering Kurdistan," it added.
The leaders made clear they would never relinquish the self-rule they won in the north after the 1991 invasion. "The people of Kurdistan will not be treated as second-class citizens after Saddam," the two leaders wrote.
The Kurds were also annoyed with the CPA. "We hope the new Iraq will be different from that of the past concerning the rights of the Kurdish people. But after the liberation of the country, we feel that the US authorities are against the Kurds for inexplicable reasons."
Both Barzani and Talabani had wanted the presidency or role of premier in the new caretaker government, but had been blocked by US overseer Paul Bremer, some former Governing Council members said. -AFP
