BAGHDAD, July 22: Prominent Sunnis launched an offensive on Friday against federalist ideas put forward for Iraq’s new constitution as negotiations to complete a draft near an August 15 deadline. Sunni politicians believe their interests would be better represented in a strong, centralized state like the one created when Iraq gained independence from British rule in 1932.

“Some want to bury this country’s identity in a constitution written too quickly,” said Sheikh Mahmud al-Sumaidai, speaking at the Um al-Qora mosque.

“We cannot accept a text aimed at dividing the country,” he said.

For Sumaidai, a senior leader of the main Sunni clerical body, the Council of Muslim Scholars, “the voices that call for federalism are not those of loyal people. The patriots are against dividing the country, and I call on them to fight for maintaining a united Iraq.”

Without mentioning them by name Sumaidai was referring to the Kurds, who enjoyed autonomy in northern Iraq even under Saddam Hussein’s regime and who strongly back the idea of a federal state.

“We should not accept a small group, which associates its interest with federalism, imposes its ideas on the majority,” he said.

Seventeen of the 71 members of the parliamentary committee tasked with writing the new constitution are Sunnis, coopted on to panel after the community largely boycotted Januatry elections.

Two were assassinated on Tuesday, prompting the rest to suspend their involvement.

In a letter to the chairman of the drafting committee, Sheikh Houmam Hammudi, representatives of some 50 Sunni groups demanded the revision “of articles mentioned in the draft leading to the division of the country.”

The head of the waqf, responsible for Sunni religious endowments, Adnan al-Dulaimi, told AFP that the type of federalism being proposed for Iraq “is not the same one that exists in other parts of the world.

“Here, it’s all about creating Shia, Sunni and Kurdish federalism, which will lead to the division of the country, then its disintegration,” he said.

Salah al-Mutlaq, spokesman for the Council of National Dialogue, which has six representatives on the drafting committee, accused those who support the “dismembering of Iraq” of being behind Tuesday’s murders.

“We are opposed to the plans of federalism in the constitution because it is the beginning of the division of Iraq. We are one country and we have no need for such plans,” he said.

The withdrawal of the committee’s Sunni Arab members risks undermining the legitimacy of the final document.

It could also result in the new constitution being turned down in a referendum scheduled for mid-October as the rules stipulate that the charter fails if it is rejected by two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces.

Sunnis form a majority in Al-Anbar, Salaheddin and Nineveh provinces.

US diplomats have been “talking intensively with all the key players in the Iraqi constitutional negotiations,” a senior US official told reporters.

They have urging them to be flexible, realistic in what they can obtain and pressing “the tremendous importance” of meeting the August 15 deadline to complete the final document. —AFP

7 policemen killed

Seven policemen and four civilians were killed in Baghdad on Friday.

Five police officials, including two wearing civilian clothes, were killed in three drive-by shootings in Baghdad. Another was wounded and two passers-by died in one of the attacks.

Two other policemen were shot dead at an eastern Baghdad crossroad as they directed traffic.—AFP