Top Sunni Spurns Iraq Constitution
The chairman of Iraq's constitution committee said a new draft, including the latest compromise, will be sent to parliament Saturday or Sunday even though a top Sunni Arab negotiator said Saturday that no agreement has been reached on the draft and called on Iraqis to reject it in the Oct. 15 referendum.
Saleh al-Mutlaq made the statement on Al-Jazeera television after Sunnis studied compromise proposals offered by the Shiites on federalism and purges of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
"The issue of division through federalism is on the table," al-Mutlaq said. "The Iraqi people have to give their word now and reject the constitution because this constitution is the beginning of the division of the country and the beginning of creating disturbance in the country."
Asked about Shiite offers, he replied: "We are still far from what we need and what the people need."
A Shitte negotiator, Khaled al-Attiyah, said a "consensus" had been reached on the charter and an amended version would be sent to parliament Saturday. Asked about that, al-Mutlaq said simply: "Let them."
That suggested the Shiites and their Kurdish allies might be prepared to send the document to the assembly without Sunni concurrence.
Government spokesman Laith Kubba indicated that the talks were hopelessly deadlocked.
"This is the end of the road," he told Al-Arabiya television. "In the end, we will put this constitution to the people to decide."
In other developments:
Earlier, a Shiite negotiator reported progress in constitutional talks with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds on federalism but problems on the proposal to ban members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from public life.
Negotiator Jawad al-Maliki said the issue, known here as "de-Baathification," was especially difficult because it was something "we cannot drop."
"We will not be easy with this point at all," al-Maliki said. The Sunnis were being tough in defending the rights of former Baath Party members, he said, and "it is regrettable to us that the Sunnis and the Baath are in the same pot."
The progress came after Shiite negotiators, prodded by President Bush, offered what they called their final compromise proposal to Sunnis to try to break the impasse over the draft constitution, a Shiite official said.
Bush telephoned a key Shiite leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, on Thursday to urge consensus over the draft, Abbas al-Bayati told The Associated Press.
But constitution talks have been snagged repeatedly in the past two weeks, and, considering
, the rest of the constitution ratification process promises to be a long and tumultuous, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports.Al-Maliki said there had been progress on the issue of federalism after Shiites guaranteed that the parliament to be elected in December would take up the issue first.
Sunni negotiator Kamal Hamdoun said he and his Sunni colleagues were "studying the suggestions that we received."
The constitution bans Saddam's party and "its symbols" and grants legal status to a committee responsible for purging Baath members from government and public life. Sunnis dominated party ranks.
Earlier in the day, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Kurdish mediator Barham Saleh were seen arriving at a Green Zone residence where top Shiites were huddling.
Al-Bayati said the concessions were on the pivotal issues of federalism and the Baath Party, adding: "We cannot offer more than that."
Iraq's Sunni vice president said the current draft was written only by Shiites and Kurds and is "far from the aspirations of all Iraqi people."
Under a federal system, the provinces would have significant powers, in contrast to Saddam's regime in which Sunnis dominated a strong central government.
The Sunnis have demanded a limit of three provinces, the number the Kurds have in their self-ruled region in the north. The Sunnis have publicly accepted the continued existence of the Kurdish regional administration within its current boundaries.
But without limits, Sunnis fear not only a giant Shiite state in the south but also future bids by the Kurds to expand their region, as they have demanded. That would leave the Sunnis cut off from Iraq's oil wealth in the north and south.
Sunnis had insisted that the issue of dividing Iraq into federated regions be deferred until after the December parliamentary election. Many Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election for the current parliament, which is dominated by Shiites and Kurds.
The issue of federalism is complex, and some key Sunnis have taken a harder line against it than their negotiators. Some Sunni clerics have also condemned as anti-Islamic parts of the document their own negotiators have accepted.