BAGHDAD: Iraq's prime minister says the drafting of a new constitution will be as important to his country as the writing of the US constitution was to America over 200 years ago. Negotiations will be hard fought, and to a tight deadline.
Those given the task of drafting the treaty will have only a few months to play with, and will struggle to come up with a formula which satisfies everyone in Iraq's fragmented society of Sunnis, Shias, secular nationalists, Kurds, Christians, Turkmen and others.
Fierce arguments are expected over the extent to which Sharia law will form the basis of Iraqi law, and over the degree of autonomy the treaty will grant to Iraq's diverse ethnic groups - most notably the Kurds in the north.
"These are issues that cannot be avoided," said Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Queen Mary's College in London. "I expect they'll run it right down to the wire, there will be a lot of last minute compromises and the final result will be deliberately vague, and a spirational rather than detailed."
Noah Feldman, a professor of law at New York University and a former adviser to the US authorities which ran Iraq immediately after the war, also said he expected the new constitution to be short on detail and often imprecise.
He described the timeframe for drafting it as "very tight". Iraq is currently governed according to the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), an interim constitution drawn up by Iraqi authorities - with strong backing from the United States and Britain - and ratified in March last year.
The new constitution is supposed to replace it, providing Iraq with a more permanent legal framework. The TAL states the new constitution must be drafted by Aug 15. If not, a referendum on it, due by Oct 15, and a general election scheduled for no later than Dec 15, will be delayed.
With Iraq's leading politicians locked in talks over the formation of a new government and no breakthrough expected soon, it could be several weeks before a committee to draft the constitution is established.
That will leave it only four or five months to do the job. Anyone following the European Union's tortuous efforts to draw up a new constitution over the past three years knows that could be a tall order.
SIX MONTH DELAY?: There is a provision in the TAL which would allow a delay of six months, but analysts said the government would be reluctant to invoke it as it would have a knock-on effect on other issues, including the end-of-year general election and the timetable for an eventual withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Dodge said he believed the Aug 15 deadline would be met, largely because legislators would stick closely to the current wording of the TAL, a pithy 25-page document dwarfed by its EU equivalent, which is the size of a telephone directory.
Analysts said they were encouraged by comments from some of Iraq's leading politicians regarding the role of Islamic law in the new treaty. The Shia list which won the Jan 30 election has said that while it wants the treaty to respect Iraq's Islamic identity, it is willing to accept other influences too.
Feldman said that while the debate over Sharia law would be tricky, it would not be the biggest problem. "This is an easy issue compared to Kurdistan, Kirkuk, and the question of minority representation in government," he said.
He was referring to Kurdish demands for greater autonomy in the north and for control of the disputed city of Kirkuk, as well as the problem of how to protect the rights of Iraq's Sunni minority, which fared badly in the election and has said it fears being ostracised by the new government.
Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi recognized this week the difficulties faced by the country's would-be treaty writers - Iraq's 21st-century answer to George Washington and his co-signatories.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Allawi told the newspaper's American readers that "the task of writing this constitution is as critical for us as the task performed by your country's Founding Fathers".
"Our Founding Fathers must ensure the constitution guarantees basic rights for all Iraqis, safeguards our hard-won democracy and reflects fairly - and is seen to reflect - the views of Iraq's diverse population," Allawi wrote.
"If we can meet this challenge, the new constitution will provide a huge opportunity to heal the divisions across Iraqi society which were deliberately deepened by Saddam Hussein." -Reuters
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