Envoy Delivers U.S. Vision for Iraqi Constitution

Driving toward a Monday deadline, Iraqi officials said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had presented to selected leaders Thursday a U.S. version of provisions of the new Iraqi constitution that remain in dispute.

After a day of ducking in and out of meetings with politicians, Khalilzad presented a document based on the constitution drafted by an Iraqi commission but containing language the Americans recommended as ways to settle divisive issues, people close to the leaders said.

“It’s the full constitution but with the American points of view on the main points where we have differences,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of Iraq’s constitutional commission who is close to the Kurdish leadership. Othman and other Kurds were awake at midnight going over the document.

Several versions of the constitution have been leaked over the past few weeks. One, drafted by the commission, largely reflects the thinking of Iraq’s Shiite Muslims. Another was drafted by Kurds, and a third version included some Sunni proposals on the relative powers of the provinces and the central government.

“I guess you could say there’s a Kurdish version, a Sunni [version], a Shiite [version] and an American one,” said another person close to the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Washington is worried that the constitution will not be completed by Monday and has pressed the Iraqis to meet the deadline. Washington is seeking to maintain momentum to assure the American people that the situation in Iraq has not reached a stalemate and because it fears that any delay will further fuel the insurgency.

“For them it’s very important, and it is to us too, to meet the deadline. Hopefully we will reach it ... but there are some basic things that are important to us,” Othman said.

President Bush urged Iraqis to finish work on the constitution by Monday.

“We have made it clear that we believe that constitution can be and should be agreed upon by Aug. 15,” Bush said, speaking to reporters at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, after meeting with his national security advisors.

Earlier Thursday, Bush held a teleconference with Khalilzad. Bush acknowledged that the Iraqis faced difficult issues in drafting the constitution, including the role of religion and the status of women. He said he hoped that “the drafters of the constitution understand our strong belief that women ought to be treated equally in the Iraqi society.”

Speaking later to reporters in Texas, national security advisor Stephen Hadley said Khalilzad “believes that some compromises are coming forward.”

The U.S. approach and that of the Kurds appeared to conflict. Kurds, who have been the Americans’ closest allies in Iraq, are adamant that revenue from oil in the three Kurdish provinces should go directly to the regional government, with a portion shared with the central government. The published Kurdish version of the constitution proposed allowing 60% to 65% of the revenue to remain in Kurdistan.

The Kurds expect the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which lies just beyond the current borders of the Kurdish provinces, to ultimately vote to become part of the Kurds’ region. The Kurds are pushing to set a deadline for Kurds driven out of Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein to return to their homes, displacing the Arabs now living there.

The United States does not support keeping oil revenue under the control of regional governments. It prefers that the money be sent to the central government and redistributed to the provinces. This is in part because Sunnis have made clear that they will accept autonomy for regions such as the Kurdish provinces only if the oil revenue is dealt with by the central government.

The U.S. also opposes a deadline for the return of the Kurds.

People who have looked at the latest U.S. language say it reflects those positions. They added that the U.S. describes Islam as one source of Iraq’s law, not the primary source.

Comments on Thursday by a Shiite leader indicated that Shiites, a majority in the country, were not willing to yield on the role of Islam and that they would insist on being able to form a single political entity.

At a major demonstration in the holy city of Najaf, Abdelaziz Hakim, the leader of the largest parliamentary bloc, said that it was a “sacred goal” for Shiites to form a large region in central and southern Iraq. Sunnis particularly dislike this idea, fearing that it will set the stage for the fracturing of the country.

“We think it necessary to form one whole region in the south,” said Hakim, who spoke the day after a lengthy meeting with the senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

The Shiites appeared to be preparing for the possibility that the country as a whole, which must hold a referendum on the constitution, might reject the idea of describing Islam as a primary source of law. If that happens, having a semi-autonomous state in the south could allow the Shiites to impose Islamic rules there.

Times staff writers Ashraf Khalil in Baghdad and Edwin Chen in Crawford contributed to this report.