A top Sunni Arab negotiator said Saturday that no agreement has been reached on the draft constitution and called on Iraqis to reject it in an Oct. 15 referendum. A government spokesman indicated talks were hopelessly deadlocked and said "this is the end of the road."
The end of the road
This was always going to be the hardest part
of the entire Operation Iraqi Freedom. I said that, the state department said that, hell even the first Bush Admin. advisers said that, including Cheney.
Well guess what, the analyst were right, you couldn't remove Sadaam without Iraq imploding into Civil War that would then destabilize the entire Middle East.
Now we have brought Iraq to the brink.
Strong divide
A Shiite negotiator, Khaled al-Attiyah, said a "consensus" had been reached on the charter and an amended version would be sent to parliament this weekend. 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.
Another Sunni representative complained the Shiites were ignoring them.
"They are sending us letters as if we are living in two different countries," Saleh al-Mutlaq said.
Iraq's Sunni Arab Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer said the draft, submitted to parliament last Monday over Sunni objections, was written by Shiites and Kurds but that the country needs a constitution "that keeps the unity of Iraqi soil and gives rights to all Iraqis."
There is just too much that still divides these various groups and it goes beyond Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds but feuds inside each group itself.
Despite Bush's desparation this is all going to go very badly
The White House confirmed that Bush telephoned a top Shiite leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, and Shiite officials said the president urged them to make compromises with the Sunnis in the interest of national unity.
In offering concessions on the pivotal issues of federalism and Baath Party members, Shiite negotiator Abbas al-Bayati said: "We cannot offer more than that."
Sadoun Zubaydi, a Sunni member of the drafting committee, had said he did not expect an end to the constitutional impasse soon and blamed the Americans for interfering in what was supposed to be an Iraqi process.
"Bush's hypocrisy is huge -- in January he wouldn't allow a postponement of parliamentary elections to allow all groups to prepare properly because he was trying to sugarcoat everything that happens here for his domestic audience," Zubaydi said.
"Now, he's calling the Shiites and issuing instructions that they should not ignore the group that was marginalized in those defective elections. ... To the last minute, this supposedly Iraqi process is being dictated by the U.S. government."
The constitution would provide for a federal state, one in which provinces would have significant powers in contrast to Saddam's regime in which Sunnis dominated a strong central government.
The charter would allow any number of provinces to combine and form a federal state with broader powers. 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 but within its current boundaries.
Sunnis opposed to Shiite, Kurds rule
Without limits, Sunnis fear not only a giant Shiite state in the south but also future bids by the Kurds to expand their region into northern oil-producing areas, as they have demanded. That would leave the Sunnis cut off from Iraq's oil wealth in the north and south. More than a million Sunni Arabs live in areas dominated by Shiites.
The rhetoric is really heating up now
"Don't follow constitutions of the infidels," influential Sunni cleric Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei told the congregation Friday at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque. "We don't want a constitution that brings the curse of separation and division to this country."
we have 160,000 troops sitting in the middle of a powder keg...and guess what the fuse was just lit.
Update [2005-8-26 23:38:30 by Nes]:
Washingtonpost editorial board
Yet the growing violence of recent weeks, combined with constitutional provisions that should be troubling for supporters of a secular Iraqi democracy as well as for Iraqi minorities, places the U.S. mission in the most precarious position it has experienced since the transition to Iraqi sovereignty 14 months ago.
(snip)
But it is dispiriting, and damaging to the chances for success, that President Bush still refuses to speak honestly to the country about the challenges the United States now faces, or how he intends to address them.
(snip)
Mr. Bush breezily praised the constitutional process as if it were the antithesis of the military conflict, rather than a political expression of the same Iraqi power struggle. He boasted that Iraq will have a constitution that "honors women's rights" and "the rights of minorities" even though the prevailing draft raises serious questions about both.
General Richard Myers admits that US force is the only thing keeping Civil War in Iraq and, subsequently stability in the Middle East, in
check.
If U.S. forces were to leave Iraq before it was stabilized, it would create "instant instability" in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia and possibly Iran, the military's top general said Friday.