BAGHDAD, Sept 13: Iraq’s dominant Shia bloc said on Wednesday it has agreed to delay the implementation of a law on setting up autonomous regions, in the event it is adopted, until violence subsides in the country.
“There is an agreement to postpone the implementation of federalism even if it is adopted in principle,” said lawmaker Sabah Saedi, a spokesman for the predominantly Shia Fadhila party, a faction of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
Mr Saedi is also a member of a political committee of the UIA, which proposed the law whose reading was on Sunday postponed until Sept 19 after strong protests over the draft by Sunni lawmakers.
“We all agree on the principle of federalism, but some of the factions of the UIA want to delay its implementation because the atmosphere is not right,” he said after a meeting of the representatives of the UIA leaders.
“The question is not of just adopting and implementing the law, but of making it a success.”
Mr Saedi said there were vast differences within the UIA factions on how the proposed law could be implemented.
He said one view was to make the eight central and southern provinces of Iraq into one region, the other was to make four provinces into one region, while the third view was to make each province a federal region.
“We are for the second and the third option,” said the Fadhila party spokesman.
The most significant climbdown was seen from the Shia Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the grouping that has been one of the most vocal advocators of federalism in Iraq.
“We are not going to implement federalism,” said SCIRI lawmaker Sheikh Jalaluddin al-Saghir.
“We need political consensus from all parties, besides creating a convenient administrative infrastructure,” he said+, adding Shiite clerics also needed to be consulted on the issue.
The Shia alliance had last week forwarded a draft law to the parliament suggesting mechanisms to break-up the country into regions.
But the draft faced stiff opposition from some of the Shia factions and the Sunni Arabs who fear such a political set up would rob them off the country’s vast oil reserves in the Kurdish north and the Shia south.
SPEAKER: The speaker of the Iraqi parliament said that a controversial plan to partition the country into three autonomous regions is politically dead, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Mahmud al-Mashhadani said in an interview on Tuesday that legislation to implement the federalism concept which threatened to collapse the country’s fragile multi-sect government, would likely be postponed indefinitely after a meeting of political leaders on Wednesday.—AFP
