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Iraqi lawmakers OK last-minute amendments
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-13 08:40
Iraqi lawmakers approved a set of last-minute amendments to the constitution
without a vote on Wednesday, sealing a compromise designed to win Sunni support
and boost chances for the charter's approval in a referendum just three days
away.
The deal, brokered with intense U.S. mediation, came as insurgents pressed
their campaign to wreck Saturday's referendum. A suicide bomber killed 30 Iraqis
at an army recruitment center in a northern town where another bomber had struck
just a day earlier.
At least one major Sunni Arab party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said it will
now support the draft at the polls. But some other Sunni parties rejected the
amendments and said they would still campaign for a "no" vote.
Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also
weighed in, ordering Shiites to vote "yes" in the referendum, one of his aides,
Faisal Thbub, said. It was the most direct show of support for the charter by
al-Sistani, whose call brought out huge numbers of voters to back Shiite parties
in January elections.
The most significant change is the introduction of a mechanism allowing Sunni
Arabs to try to make more substantive changes in the constitution later, after a
new parliament is elected in December.
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Iraqs Prime Minsiter
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, President Jalal Talabani, and Speaker of Iraqs
Transitional National Assembly (TNA) Hajim al-Hassani, sit during a
special session for TNA Wednesday Oct. 12, 2005, in the heavily fortified
Green Zone area in Baghdad, Iraq. [AP] | Sunnis
want to weaken the considerable autonomous powers the Shiite and Kurdish
mini-states would have under the constitution. But there's no guarantee they
will succeed: They will still likely face strong opposition from majority
Shiites and Kurds in the new parliament.
The amendments passed Wednesday also made some key symbolic concessions to
Sunni Arabs, starting with the first article underlining that Iraq will be a
single nation with its unity guaranteed — a nod to fears among the disaffected
minority that the draft as it stood would fragment the country.
That was not enough, however, for many Sunni leaders.
"The added articles do not change anything and provide no guarantees,"
Muthana Harith al-Dhari, spokesman of the influential Association of Muslim
Scholars, told Al-Jazeera television.
"We have called for boycotting the elections or rejecting the constitution,"
he said.
Still, the changes will likely split the Sunni vote enough to prevent them
from defeating the draft constitution. The draft will be rejected if more than
two thirds of the voters oppose it in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces, and
Sunnis have the potential to do so in just four.
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