Larger role in constitution promised to Sunnis
BAGHDAD -- Hoping to avoid a threatened boycott, Iraq's president announced yesterday that the government will give Sunni Arabs 25 seats on the committee charged with drafting the nation's constitution.
The move, made public by President Jalal Talabani, is seen by many in Iraq as a crucial step in ensuring that Sunnis, who provide the base for an insurgency that has killed thousands, stay engaged in the political process.
The announcement came the day after a group of Sunni leaders said they would walk out of the constitutional process and possibly invoke a veto by provincial bloc vote, if Shi'ite and Kurdish lawmakers on the 55-member committee did not create an additional 25 slots for them. The Sunnis had flatly rejected a government offer of an additional 13 seats.
''We have decided to allow 25 members from the Sunnis to the committee for the drafting of the constitution with full rights like other members who were elected by parliament," Talabani said.
But the news did not dampen growing concern that with less than seven months left until planned elections for a permanent government, the Sunnis are still mired in infighting and a lack of direction.
Since January's national elections, the Sunnis have seen their stake in the nation crumble. A tandem of Shi'ite and Kurdish political tickets dominated the elections, in which most Sunnis did not vote. As a result the Sunni Arab population, from 15 percent to 20 percent of the nation, has 17 spots in the 275-member national assembly.
US military officials say the only way to defeat the insurgency is the formation of a government that the majority of Sunnis view as legitimate.
''There's no silver bullet," said a high-ranking US military officer in Baghdad who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of US policy to defer to Iraqis about Iraqi political matters. ''You've got to . . . work the political process -- the political process will be the decisive element."
Sunni Muslims near downtown Baghdad have only to drive down the street to see how precarious their position in Iraq is these days.
On roads near the party headquarters for the Shi'ite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is in large part shaping the policy of the nation, there are Kurdish militia members patrolling the streets.
One of the key problems of resolving the disputes between Sunnis and Shi'ites has to do with the difference between their religious institutions. Shi'ites are organized around marja'iya, a council of clerics, led in Iraq by Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani. The marja'iya issues religious edicts that Shi'ite faithful follow as law.
Sunnis, on the other hand, have no such unifying structure. The difference was made clear in January when one list formed under the guidance of Sistani was the choice of almost all Shi'ites voting.
Those Sunnis who did go to the polls split their votes between a myriad of organizations including those backed by a presumptive monarch, a group of communists and a religious group that may or may not have been boycotting the election.
Almost as soon as Talabani said yesterday that the government would concede on the number of seats for the constitutional committee, Sunni leaders started arguing about who would fill them.
''We couldn't reach a final agreement . . . because of the useless arguments among the Sunnis about selecting who will represent them," said Adnan al Dulaimi, head of the Sunni Endowment, a major Sunni party. 