Kurds Reject Key Parts of Proposed Iraq Constitution

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, February 21, 2004

BAGHDAD, Feb. 20 - Kurdish leaders are refusing to accept key provisions of an interim Iraqi constitution drafted by the Bush administration and instead are demanding far broader autonomy, including the right to control military forces in Kurdish areas and the freedom to reject laws passed by the national government, Kurdish officials said Friday.

The position adopted by the Kurds, an ethnic group that accounts for about 20 percent of Iraq's predominantly Arab population, threatens to block approval of the interim constitution by Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council and deal another setback to the Bush administration's effort to create a sovereign transitional government. Arab leaders oppose almost all of the Kurds' demands, which would effectively preserve an autonomous Kurdish mini-state in northern Iraq with its own army, laws, tax system, judiciary and parliament.

Although the Bush administration also opposes many of the Kurdish demands, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, has spent the past week holding urgent meetings with Kurdish and Arab politicians to forge a compromise. But neither side appears willing to make substantial concessions, according to Kurdish and Arab officials. Iraqi Arabs contend that the Kurds should not receive special privileges; Kurds insist they are unwilling to give up many of the rights they enjoyed during 12 years of virtual independence that began after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"Our side is seeking a voluntary union with Iraq, but this voluntary union comes with the precondition that the system of government in Iraq is both federal and democratic, allowing us to maintain the local control we have had for more than a decade," said Qabad Talabani, the son of Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.

Iraqi Arabs view the Kurdish proposal as the first step toward the division of Iraq into separate states. "These ideas don't strike me as leading to one integrated nation," said Faisal Istrabadi, a senior aide to Adnan Pachachi, an Arab member of the Governing Council.

The interim constitution being considered by the council was written by Bush administration officials in conjunction with Istrabadi, a trial lawyer who lives in the Chicago area, and Salem Chalabi, a lawyer who is a nephew of former exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, another council member.

Drafters of the document plan to meet on Saturday to discuss the Kurdish demands and a variety of other changes suggested by Arab council members. The Bush administration wants the interim constitution to be completed by Feb. 28, although several Iraqis involved in the process have said they believe negotiations will continue beyond the deadline.

"We have reached some of the most contentious issues about the future of our country," one participant on the drafting committee said. "Reaching an agreement will not be easy."

While the administration remains committed to a federal system of government for Iraq, Bremer and other U.S. officials want the Kurds to soften their position on autonomy out of concern that a hard-line stance will alienate Iraq's two main groups of Arabs. Sunni Muslim Arabs, who live predominantly in provinces directly south of Kurdish areas, are worried about Kurdish demands to reestablish control in areas where former president Saddam Hussein's government moved large numbers of Arabs during a decades-long campaign to drive out Kurds. Shiite Muslim Arabs, who live farther south and comprise about 60 percent of the country's population, fear that the Kurdish position will weaken Iraq's eventual national government, which the Shiites expect to control.

"Finding a way to accommodate the Kurds without angering the Arabs is the essential challenge in keeping Iraq whole," said a U.S. official involved in the political transition.

"What kind of federalism will we have? How strong will autonomy be?" asked Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni Arab member of the Governing Council. "It's like a medicine. If you take the right amount, it can cure you, but if you overdose on it, it can kill you."

The Kurdish demands were outlined in a four-page proposed additional chapter to the interim constitution that was posted Friday on the Web site of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

A central component of the document is the retention of local control over Kurdish militiamen, known as pesh merga, who would be organized into a new force called the Iraqi Kurdistan National Guard. The proposal calls for the Kurdish parliament to "raise, regulate, recruit and officer" the national guard. Although Kurdish leaders are willing to allow the guard units to fall under the nominal authority of a civilian defense minister in Baghdad, effective command would rest with the Kurdish regional government.

The document also bars the deployment of soldiers from other parts of the country in Kurdish areas without the approval of the Kurdish parliament.

"It is a guarantee for the self-defense of the Kurdish people," said Rowsch Shaways, the president of the regional parliament, the Kurdistan National Assembly.

The pesh merga, which mounted a long-running resistance to Hussein's government, have been the only armed Iraqi force in the Kurdish areas since the areas became autonomous. Because U.S. troops could not enter Iraq from Turkey during last year's war, the pesh merga provided a northern front in the military campaign to topple Hussein's government. Since the war, the pesh merga have continued to provide security in Kurdish areas.

During three decades in power, Hussein ordered his army to conduct a series of military operations against the Kurds, whom he deemed subversive. Kurdish officials say that more than 180,000 Kurds were killed in the attacks, some of which involved chemical weapons.

"The people of Kurdistan will not accept the new Iraqi army to be deployed in the region of Kurdistan at this moment in time," Qabad Talabani said. "It's an unfortunate reality we face."

The interim constitution as drafted would ban any armed group that is not part of the country's official security services. The Bush administration wants the pesh merga to be folded into the new Iraqi army or civil defense units, both of which would be controlled by the national government.

Although U.S. officials said they acknowledge the contributions of the pesh merga in fighting Hussein's army, they contend that placing the Kurdish militia under local control could set a precedent for other parts of the country, particularly in the Shiite-dominated south, where more than 10,000 militiamen affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq have resisted U.S. calls to disband.

"The [Kurdish] proposal up to this point has essentially amounted to having two states with two standing armies but without a unified command structure," Istrabadi said. "That doesn't strike me as an outstanding idea."

Kurdish leaders are also insisting that laws that do not pertain to foreign policy or other subjects clearly in the domain of the national government must be ratified by the Kurdistan National Assembly before they can take effect in Kurdish areas. Kurdish leaders, who adhere to a relatively liberal school of Islam, said they want the freedom to reject any legislation passed by the national government based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

"It's our insurance against extremism," Shaways said. "If the majority of people in Iraq want a religious government, we should have the right to keep our secular government if our population wants that."

Kurdish leaders want to maintain their own judiciary with its own penal code. They also want to require that Iraq's permanent constitution, which will be put to a national referendum, also receive the approval of a majority in Kurdistan.

Two other Kurdish demands are of particular concern to Iraqi Arabs: local control of oil revenue and efforts to redress the eviction of Kurds from their homes by Hussein's government. The Kurds' proposal stipulates that all natural resources in Kurdistan belong to the Kurdish regional administration, which would receive a share of Iraq's oil sales in proportion to the number of Kurds in the country's population.

Kurdish leaders also want the interim constitution to codify a process for displaced Kurds to return to their homes and for redrawing the boundaries of the disputed province of Kirkuk, which was gerrymandered by Hussein's government to reduce its Kurdish population. "We need to reverse Saddam's ethnic-cleansing policies," Talabani said.

That goal has provoked angry complaints from Sunni Arabs. "What they're proposing is a very dangerous land grab," Yawar said.

Kurdish leaders said they were under intense pressure from their constituents not to compromise during the negotiations. Talabani said nearly 2 million Kurds had signed a petition calling for a referendum on independence.

"We have a street to worry about," he said. "We can't be seen to be selling out."

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