• Date: 6 March 2004

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Washington Post

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Five Shiite members of Iraq's US appointed Governing Council, including its acting president and the leaders of three large political parties, holed up in one member's office around noon and refused to attend an elaborate signing ceremony before more than 300 invited guests and a musical ensemble. The Shiite stance forced U.S. officials to cancel the event and prompted urgent negotiating sessions that stretched through the afternoon and into the night, the aides said.

The Shiites' refusal to sign was regarded by some council officials as a stark indication of the deep divisions that exist between rival religious and ethnic groups, suggesting that a consensus on the interim constitution reached earlier this week may not have been as solid as U.S. and Iraqi officials had claimed.

Although the five Shiites had endorsed the document on Monday, they told other members that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had raised last-minute objections to two key elements: a provision that effectively gives minority Kurds veto power over a permanent constitution, and plans for a transitional government with a single president, the aides said. Leaders of Iraq's Shiites, a group long oppressed by former president Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab-dominated government, want to ensure that Shiites have political clout in the transitional government befitting their majority status.

Despite the lengthy discussions, members could not resolve differences on Friday, and adjourned shortly before midnight, the aides said. The council released a statement early Saturday saying it would reconvene on Monday "to finalize the issue and sign the law."

The delay is another setback to the Bush administration's efforts to transfer power to Iraqis. The administration had set a Feb. 28 deadline for an interim constitution to be completed, a schedule meant to give Iraqi leaders enough time to prepare for a scheduled June 30 handover of sovereignty.

"The consensus has always been very fragile," said an adviser to one of the council's five Kurdish members. If the Shiites succeed in renegotiating parts of the document, known as the Transitional Administrative Law, Kurds and Sunni Arabs would also seek to make revisions, forcing more extensive revisions and delays, the adviser said.

"If they open the discussion on one point, then we'll open the discussion on other points," the Kurdish adviser said.

An adviser to a Sunni Arab member said Kurdish leaders "were not at all pleased" by the Shiite demands.

In Friday's frantic meetings, aides to Kurdish and Shiite members said no concessions were given to the Shiites. Much of the time was spent attempting to convince the five Shiite members of the importance of a single president and Kurdish veto power over the constitution, the aides said.

The five Shiites agreed to discuss the provisions with Sistani and try to persuade him to accede to the agreed-upon document, two council officials said.

"The Shiites said they will go and talk to Sistani again," one of the council officials said. "But what we don't know is whether they will try to convince him or they will just get him to strengthen his resolve."

The delay again demonstrated Sistani's political clout. A reclusive cleric who lives in the holy city of Najaf, Sistani has long vowed to stay away from the day-to-day operations of government, but he has taken a keen interest in the interim constitution because, he has told visitors, he believes it to be central to Iraq's democratic transition and the establishment of religious freedom for Shiites.

Sistani's pronouncements about the need to have elected individuals draft a constitution scuttled the Bush administration's first transition plan. A second plan, to select an interim government through regional caucuses, also was torpedoed by Sistani, forcing the administration to agree to hold elections for a transitional government by early next year.

The council and the occupation authority have not decided what type of administration will run Iraq between the June 30 handover of power and the elections, although Sistani's approval is regarded as a prerequisite, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

"The Shiites won't act without Sistani's blessing," the Kurdish adviser said. "This is very troubling to the rest of the members. While we respect Ayatollah Sistani as a religious man, he should not dictate the terms of our government."

The five who refused to sign the interim document were Ahmed Chalabi, a longtime U.S. ally; Abdul Aziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq; Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa party; Mowaffak Rubaie, an independent Shiite politician who is close to Sistani; and Muhammed Bahr Uloum, a cleric who is heading the council this month under its rotating presidency.

The five had tried to get the eight other Shiites on the council to join them, but they were unable to do so, council officials said.

The five stayed in Chalabi's council office for much of the afternoon, while the other 20 members met in the official chambers one floor below, aides said. The council did not meet as a whole until nightfall, U.S. officials said.

Chalabi has increasingly allied himself with Sistani in recent weeks in an effort to build popular support among Shiites. When eight Shiite members walked out of a council meeting a week ago to protest the manner in which a vote on women's rights was conducted, they retired to Chalabi's house, located in the city's poshest district.

The Shiites' principal objection involves a clause in the interim constitution that says a permanent constitution would not go into effect if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, even if the document receives a nationwide majority. Because the Kurds control three provinces in the north, the provision would effectively give the Kurds veto power over the constitution. The Kurds make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population.

The Kurds had sought the provision as a bargaining chip to prevent a Shiite majority from dictating the terms of the constitution. The five Shiites want the provision deleted.

"Some of these provinces have only 400,000 or 500,000 people," Hamid Bayati, a senior official with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told the Associated Press. "We cannot have that number of people rejecting a constitution for 25 million people."

Kurdish leaders regard the provision as central to a federal system of government. "This whole issue has to do with how much power does the majority get versus how many rights and protections do the minorities get," the Kurdish adviser said. "In any democracy, there has to be the concept of minority rights."

The five Shiites also want the government that takes power after elections to be headed by a five -member presidency instead of a single president and two vice presidents as currently envisioned by the interim constitution. The Shiites fear that under the arrangement in the current draft - a single president with two powerful vice presidents - the authority of the president, presumably a Shiite, would be diluted by the two vice presidents, a Sunni Arab and a Kurd. The objectors therefore want a five-member co-presidency that would give the Shiites a clear 3-to-2 majority, sources said.

Daniel Senor, a spokesman for the occupation authority, would not comment on specific areas of disagreement. He called the dispute "a technical matter related to minority rights."

Senor said the provisions in dispute did not affect fundamental elements of the constitution that had been of concern to the U.S. government, such as the role of Islam in government and women's rights. Under the draft interim constitution, Islam is the official religion in Iraq but not the sole source of legislation. "Ninety-eight percent of the document is still unanimously agreed to," he said.

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer, could have tried to force the process but decided this morning to "let the Governing Council members work this out for themselves." He said Bremer was not involved in mediating the dispute.

"Democracy is an inherently messy process," Senor said.

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