BAGHDAD, Aug 21: Iraq said on Sunday it might seek a second extension to the constitution deadline, as its leaders remain divided over crucial issues amid rising international pressure to finish the charter.
“If the text is not handed to the national assembly by the deadline...one choice is to ask for another one-week extension or the other is to dissolve parliament,” Leith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, told reporters.
After missing the original Aug 15 deadline to submit the first post-Saddam Hussein charter to parliament, Iraq’s leaders secured an extension allowing them to postpone an agreement until Aug 22.
However, sharp differences remained on Sunday on issues, including a federal structure for Iraq, the role of Islam and the sharing of national oil wealth, raising the prospect of another parliamentary vote to extend for a fresh date.
“We have a problem here... there is one group who wants a 21st century constitution and there is another group who wants a seventh century constitution,” said an Iraqi source close to negotiations.
“Unfortunately, America is looking at both the groups with the same eye. They just want the draft to be ready on time.”
Washington sees the charter as key to Iraq’s political transition in the face of a deadly insurgency threatening to engulf the country.
Negotiators reported that US officials were pressuring Kurds to give up their demands of self-determination and oil ownership in a bid to reach a deal with the majority Shias.
“The US is pressuring the Kurds to give up these two demands,” said one source, while others said US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had personally persuaded Kurdish groups to soften their stance.
Kurdish leaders on Saturday offered a compromise on self-determination, a demand that would effectively give their de facto autonomous northern region the chance to secede from Iraq later.
However, Kurdish ambitions to have the oil centre of Kirkuk included within their territory and to seek a degree of control over the region’s oil reserves could be more difficult to assuage.
Installing Islam as the country’s main source of legislation and allowing clerics a political role, as demanded by the conservative Shia bloc, are also obstacles.
The United States on Saturday dropped its opposition to enshrining Islam as “the” main source of legislation and not just “a” main source in an effort to please the majority Shias.
However, the secular Kurds strongly oppose the move, arguing that it contravenes women’s rights and the country’s secularist traditions.
“We will oppose this as much as we can,” Kurdish negotiator Mahmud Othman said.
Observers speculate that the Shias and Kurds, who enjoy a majority in parliament, could forge a compromise deal over the heads of Sunni negotiators.
Iraqi Sunnis reject any notion of federalism, although their negotiating position is weak since they hold few parliamentary seats after largely boycotting January’s elections.
But the Sunni members have warned that if they are sidelined in any constitution deal, the charter could well be defeated in the scheduled mid-October referendum.
Under Iraq’s interim law, the charter will fail if two-thirds of voters in any three provinces reject it.
Sunni Arabs form a majority in at least three provinces: Al-Anbar, Ninevah and Salaheddin.
Baghdad on Sunday also called on neighbouring Jordan to extradite members of Saddam’s former regime, claiming that they were fomenting “terrorism” in Iraq from the Hashemite kingdom.
The United Arab Emirates and Syria were also included in a list of countries Baghdad claims are being used by groups backing insurgents in Iraq.
More than 280 foreigners are currently being held by Iraqi authorities on suspicion of “terrorism”, Baghdad said, including an unnamed Briton.
The Iraqi government also blasted Jordan for allowing Saddam’s family to conduct “hostile” political activities there.
Saddam, currently in US custody awaiting trial for crimes against humanity, could face execution after Baghdad on Sunday defended its decision to reinstate the death penalty.
The UN had protested at the planned executions of three convicted felons, but Baghdad said there was a “consensus” in Iraq on the capital punishment banned since the US-led invasion.
Rebels killed six Iraqis and kidnapped five others, including a Turkish engineer.—AFP
