Fallout of Iraq Charter Delay Is Uncertain

The Iraqi transitional government’s failure to meet its self-imposed Monday deadline to produce a draft constitution came as a damaging setback for the Bush administration, which considers the document a crucial sign of political progress.

The real question is how significant and lasting that damage might be.

If Iraq’s government uses the seven-day extension to resolve the issues dividing the country’s Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, and the parliament successfully approves the draft document next week, the missed deadline will probably be seen as little more than an unsettling glitch that temporarily caused heartburn at the White House and disappointment among Iraq’s citizens.

However, if Monday’s failure turns out to be the first in a series of delays that slows or even derails the effort to build a democratic state, the results could be catastrophic for both Iraq and the Bush administration.

Throughout the 2 1/2 years of chaos and bloodshed that have followed the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq’s steady push toward establishing a democracy has stood as the sole redeeming virtue of the U.S. mission in Iraq -- evidence that the sacrifice is worth it.

Any significant breakdown in this process could further undermine the administration’s efforts to maintain U.S. public support for a conflict that has become only bloodier in recent months.

A Gallup Poll this month showed that fewer than half of those Americans questioned believed that going to war in Iraq was worth it, and a survey conducted last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that 27% -- an all-time low -- believed President Bush had a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq under control.

“The key to maintaining some sense of public support is progress,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “If this is seen as a minor bump in the road, then the administration will be OK. But if it’s seen as the start of a major problem that the Iraqi leaders can’t get their act together at all, then the impact would be considerable.”

Because Bush has so frequently cited efforts to build a democratic Iraq as a sign of inevitable change in the region, any breakdown in drafting an Iraqi constitution would also carry implications for the administration’s broader Middle East policies.

Last month, for example, during a speech at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va., Bush praised Iraqis for “building a free nation that will be a beacon -- a beacon of liberty in the Middle East.”

After days of accentuating the importance of meeting Monday’s deadline, America’s leaders quickly shifted messages. Administration officials near Crawford, Texas, where the president is vacationing, issued a statement from Bush expressing confidence in the Iraqis’ ability to develop an “enduring consensus” over the next seven days.

“I applaud the heroic efforts of Iraqi negotiators,” Bush said.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called a news conference to stress that Iraqi negotiators had made progress toward completing their draft constitution and to note that the delay was “in full accordance” with the country’s Transitional Administration Law, which set up the constitutional process.

“They decided that they were responsible officials who needed more time to look at the very difficult issues that were in the text, and so they took that time in accordance with a process that was set up,” Rice said.

However, those tracking the negotiations in the Iraqi capital said it was hard to see what difference a week could make, noting that Iraq’s main political factions disagreed on core questions about how power should be shared. For each, there is a great deal at stake and little incentive to compromise.

“It’s hard to see anything that’s going to change in a week,” said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and an expert on Iraq. “The problem is you have three different communities with very different values, very different interests, and none of them see the constitution as an opportunity; they see it as something that will take things away from them.”

The only leverage to force compromise will be the threat of holding new elections -- which is required under the Transitional Administrative Law if the National Assembly cannot draft a constitution.

Kurds and Shiites would be likely to lose seats if there were new elections, because it is widely believed that more Sunnis would vote this time around. Most Sunnis boycotted the election in January.

James Dobbins, a former senior American diplomat who dealt with crises in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian province of Kosovo and served as Bush’s first special envoy to Afghanistan, noted that sometimes a pause can be useful during intense negotiations. But he said missing a self-imposed deadline also carries dangers.

“My experience is that if self-imposed pressures are removed, steam goes out of the engine and positions can actually harden and diverge,” said Dobbins, director of Rand Corp.’s International Security and Defense Policy Center in Washington. “Maintaining momentum is important.”

Still, in the absence of a deal among the Iraqi factions, the delay was the best of several unattractive outcomes for U.S. officials.

Another option was a draft constitution agreed to by Kurds and Shiites but rejected by Sunnis, which would have defeated the U.S. effort to have the constitution represent the country as a whole and would have set up the possibility of civil war.

The third option was missing the deadline and being forced to dissolve the National Assembly and hold elections, which would begin a new period of uncertainty that would almost certainly spur the insurgency.

“The president took a huge gamble in staking everything on meeting this deadline,” Galbraith said. “As the administration has done from Day 1, they have miscalculated the depth of the religious and ethnic differences in Iraq.”

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Marshall reported from Washington and Rubin from Baghdad. Times staff writer Warren Vieth in Crawford, Texas, contributed to this report.