Awaiting Rebirth of a Nation, Officials Pace

As night fell across the Iraqi capital Monday, hundreds of National Assembly members and several dozen journalists paced about the city’s convention center, waiting expectantly for a constitution to finally be presented.

The two sides were separated by a low partition wall but unified in their confusion: Nobody had the slightest idea what was actually happening.

The real action was taking place in al mudbakh -- the kitchen -- a euphemism for the elite group of perhaps 12 party leaders and aides who huddled behind doors that were closed even to the members of the committee drafting the constitution.

A diverse array of suit-and-tie secularists, turbaned clerics, veiled women and robed tribal elders, the transitional National Assembly had been reduced to an afterthought in the negotiations. The legislators’ job on Monday -- and the previous Monday, when the first constitutional deadline came and went -- was to wait around the convention center for hours until they received their marching orders from the kitchen.

“The constitution has not been written by the constitutional committee,” said committee member Hunayn Qaddu. “We’ve been completely left out.”

With nothing to do, the members milled about behind their partition, swapping rumors of this or that breakthrough. Some journalists did the same, while others dozed on the carpeted floors amid growing piles of junk-food wrappers and makeshift ashtrays.

Occasionally, a reporter would try to interview one of the parliament members. But there was a problem: Anyone who could talk was, by definition, out of the loop.

Some assembly members were clearly fed up with the hurry-up-and-wait nature of their assigned roles, grumbling that the party leaders expected them to risk their lives to rubber-stamp a backroom deal.

Some decided not to risk driving home through the capital’s treacherous streets at midnight. Wijdan Salim was in her car on the way home by 10 p.m.

“It’s late, and till now they haven’t got any draft of the constitution,” she said. “It’s very difficult for the people living outside the Green Zone,” the heavily fortified area that includes the convention center and other government buildings as well as private residences for officials.

Fellow lawmaker Fatah Sheik also left early, fuming about the dueling news conferences of the parties’ elite.

“Those people are only good to be on TV screens with their artificial smiles,” Sheik said. “It would be better for the [parliament] to refuse receiving that incomplete constitution, or at least admit it is incomplete.”

Comparisons with the movie “Groundhog Day” abounded, as legislators and observers speculated on whether any of them had ever really left the convention center at all: Perhaps they were all still there from last Monday; perhaps they would wake up next Monday and still be there.

Around 7 p.m., Jawad Maliki and Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir -- top officials with the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance -- emerged to announce on nationwide live television that a deal with Kurdish politicians had been finalized.

But reached on the phone two minutes later, an aide to one of the Kurdish leaders proclaimed the announcement “complete bull.”

Then an hour later, Hussein Shahristani, another United Iraqi Alliance negotiator, declared that the draft constitution was being printed for distribution to the parliament.

Less than 10 feet away, a ranking member of the Iraqi Islamic Party -- one of the groups that has represented Sunni Arabs in drafting the constitution -- seemed stunned when told what Shahristani was saying. The talks, he said, were still going on.

Two hours after that, parliament Speaker Hachim Hassani’s office released a statement saying that “discussions are continuing in order to crystallize” certain issues.

The lawmakers could have decided to hold a vote and approve another extension, as they did last Monday. Instead, a draft was presented just minutes before the deadline. And lawmakers quickly decided to put off a vote for three days to hammer out unresolved issues.

Some politicians promptly began hailing the achievement, downplaying the fact that they had beaten their midnight deadline only by submitting an incomplete constitution.

“It’s not a delay,” said a straight-faced Hassani. “We have a constitution.”

The non-delay delay was somehow both surprising and anti-climactic. It was also a confusing penultimate step in a process that has seemed to highlight rather than bridge differences in modern-day Iraqi politics.

Afterward, a yawning chasm was clearly on display: Kurdish and Shiite lawmakers were jubilant, Sunni Arabs livid.

As Planning Minister and senior Kurdish negotiator Barham Salih spoke to a crowd of reporters, National Security Advisor Mowaffak Rubaie, a Shiite, playfully shouted, “Don’t ever believe a Kurd!”

Salih smiled and yelled back: “We have our federalism, my friend. You have yet to have yours.”

Meanwhile Sunni representatives, who are bitter opponents of the joint Kurd-Shiite push to establish a federalist system, held an angry news conference warning that weakening the central government in favor of semi-independent federal regions would doom the Iraqi nation.

Moments later, Sunni delegation members engaged in a shouting match with one of the Nepalese guards who asked them to put out their cigarettes.

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Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi, Salar Jaff and Saif Rasheed contributed to this report.