Iraq Talks May Plod Until Vote in October

Sunni Arabs across the political spectrum closed ranks Saturday, proposing a flurry of amendments to a draft constitution they have condemned, while some officials said negotiations could drag on until a nationwide referendum on the charter scheduled for the fall.

Despite announcements by several Shiite politicians that negotiations were complete and the draft constitution was finished, discussions continued feverishly Saturday and might keep going until, during and after a meeting of the National Assembly scheduled for today.

“There is no D-day,” said Ali Dabagh of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that dominates the transitional assembly and the Iraqi government. “Negotiations can continue until Oct. 15.”

Early this morning, a Shiite negotiator said rifts also seemed to be emerging between Shiites and Kurds over language regarding Iraq’s ties to the Arab world. “Until now, we have not reached a deal with the Sunnis,” Jawad Maliki said. “And the Kurds have made new demands.”

At stake in the constitutional talks is the very definition of Iraq: whether it should be an amalgam of identities and regions or a well-defined state with a strong central government.

After weeks of pressing Iraqis to finish the constitution quickly, President Bush, whose approval ratings have been falling, urged Americans on Saturday to have patience.

“Like our own nation’s founders over two centuries ago, the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government,” he said in his weekly radio address. “What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion -- not at the barrel of a gun.”

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope a constitution will guide Iraq to stability and slow an insurgency that has left about 1,870 U.S. troops and thousands more Iraqis dead, including a high-ranking Iraqi army officer and five of his soldiers killed along a road in the northern city of Kirkuk on Saturday.

But the constitutional talks have become deadlocked. Iraq’s majority Shiites and northern Kurds have been unable to make a deal with Sunni Arabs, who generally prospered under Saddam Hussein’s rule and now fuel the insurgency.

Participants in the constitutional talks say the main sticking point is Sunni Arabs’ refusal to accept a proposal for a semiindependent region in the Shiite-dominated, oil-rich south. Sunni Arab representatives have resisted the Shiite push for federalism, fearing it would lead to a southern superstate independent of Baghdad.

The constitutional talks have continued nearly two weeks past the initial Aug. 15 deadline.

Legal experts and Sunni Arab critics of the Shiite-led government have begun complaining that continuing delays violate Iraq’s placeholder charter. But Feisal Istrabadi, a former Chicago lawyer who helped write Iraq’s interim constitution, said Iraqi politicians were well within the spirit of the transitional law to continue extending the deadline as long as necessary.

“I typed the deadlines with my own hands,” Istrabadi, now an Iraqi diplomat serving at the United Nations, said in a telephone interview. “There was no intent to put a stranglehold in terms of negotiating and improving the text up to Oct. 15. The National Assembly is well within its rights to continue the process.”

He added, “If the National Assembly needs more time, that’s fine.”

The Iraqi public as well as many elected officials and outside observers originally thought the draft constitution would be submitted for a vote in the National Assembly by Aug. 15.

Despite ongoing negotiations, Iraqi officials in recent days have tried to find Sunni Arabs willing to endorse the constitution and disparage the 15 Sunni Arab members of the constitutional panel as extremists.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, appeared on television last week with a group of Sunni Arab tribal leaders who supported federalism.

Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi, a secular Sunni Arab, decried the 15 as unrepresentative of their group. “The Sunnis are no different from other Iraqis,” he said in an interview last week.

“Those 15 members don’t even represent the lowest percentage of the Sunni group,” he said, deriding one member as a “truck driver” and another as an intelligence officer in Hussein’s regime.

But Saturday, Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab political party and a group of Sunni government ministers rallied to the support of the 15, proposing changes to the draft constitution virtually identical to those demanded by Sunni Arabs on the panel.

“If we want to write the constitution, we have to write it for the whole country,” said Saad Janabi, a Sunni Arab negotiator who lived in California for many years and describes himself as a liberal. “We are concerned about Iraq remaining one country.” Sticking points between Shiites and Kurds on one side and Sunni Arabs on the other have remained largely unchanged since the start of negotiations.

In addition to vehemently opposing a provision in the constitution that enshrines Iraq as a federal state, Sunni Arabs reject an article that labels Hussein’s Baath Party a terrorist entity, another provision demanded by Shiites and Kurds. They also take issue with smaller points such as the document’s failure to identify Iraq as an Arab nation and the weakened power of Iraq’s president.

“The suggestions we made were moderate,” said Culture Minister Nuri Farhan Rawi, a Sunni Arab. “We are Iraqis and do not belong to any particular sides. We want to have a constitution that is acceptable to everybody.”

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group, also issued a set of demands that signaled its solidarity with the Sunni Arabs, submitting a set of 15 proposed amendments. Some Americans, Shiites and Kurds had thought the party would be more flexible than Sunni Arab nationalists on issues such as federalism in exchange for safeguards on a role for Islam.

“We took every point that we disagreed with and brought it to the point nearest to the Sunni position,” said Alaa Makki, a high-ranking party official. “They are generally about the most important things in the constitution: the Iraqi identity, federalism, the control of resources and the authorities of the president.”

Inside the Baghdad Convention Center, where negotiations took place Saturday morning and afternoon, Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders conferred amicably, despite the apparent deadlock.

After appearing at the convention center, Dabagh, a member of a Shiite Islamist party, approached a group of Sunni Arab leaders, greeting them affectionately and huddling with them in intense conversations.

“We’re still talking,” said Hassib Obeidi, a Sunni Arab member of the constitutional panel. “The dialogue continues.”

But observers, including several advisors attached to Western nongovernmental agencies, voiced frustration with the often circuitous discussions. Instead of resolving new issues, they said, more talks often raise old issues.