Baghdad, Iraq – Iraqi political leaders broke weeks of deadlock Thursday, with Sunni Arabs accepting a compromise offer to increase their representation on the Shiite-led parliamentary committee that is to draft a constitution.
The agreement was a significant step forward in Iraq’s political process, which has been mired in arguments between Shiite and Sunni Arabs over how many Sunnis to include on the committee. Still, it fell short of being final, as political leaders have not yet agreed which Sunnis would be chosen as members.
The offer – 15 additional seats and 10 adviser positions for Sunni Arabs – was first made last week but was rejected by many Sunnis, who said they wanted more seats. Since then, Shiite members sweetened the offer, saying the committee would approve the new constitution by consensus and not by vote, making the precise number of seats held by each group less important.
U.S. and European officials have expressed hopes that greater involvement of Sunnis in the political process, including on the constitution committee, will help dampen the insurgency, whose driving force comes from violent fringes of the Sunni Arab community.
Bahaa al-Aaraji, a senior member of the Shiite-led committee, said Thursday night that Shiite leaders impressed upon the Sunnis that the offer on representation was final.
“We told them, if you are late it’s not good for you, because we start to work and we won’t wait for you,” al-Aaraji said. “That’s why they agreed quickly.”
“Everything is good now,” he said. “Today, everyone is happy.”
Sunni leaders plan to meet Saturday to discuss candidates for the panel, said Mejbel al-Sheik Isa, a member of the National Dialogue Council and one of six Sunnis who will choose the new members. The effort could prove to be a lengthy one. The Iraqi government went through a similar process in a search for suitable Sunni candidates for its Cabinet, and those talks dragged on for weeks.
But even if its membership is swiftly finalized, it is unclear how the committee will be able to steer the unwieldy and contentious process of writing this country’s first permanent legal guide without being able to use the tool of the vote. Issues such as how much power to give to regional governments and the role of Islam are expected to be hotly contested and resolving them without being able to vote might prove all but impossible.
Formally, the agreement sets up what is essentially a new 71-member body that is made up of the 55 members of the original committee and the new Sunni members, as well as a new member from a small religious sect, the Sabians.
The original committee was made up of legislators elected in January, with 28 members from the main Shiite block, and 27 others, including 15 Kurds and one Christian. There are two Sunnis on the 55-member committee, but one is part of the Shiite bloc, and the other a member of the party of Ayad Allawi, the secular Shiite former prime minister. At least some of the new Sunni committee members will not be members of parliament.
In many ways, the deal is a fresh start for Iraq’s dispossessed Sunni Arabs, who have grown increasingly isolated since largely refusing to vote in national elections in January. Shiites, who swept to power in the elections, have been under pressure by American and European officials to offer Sunni Arabs a bigger role in politics.
Iraqi leaders have pledged they will not resort to a legally available extension, and legislators are scrambling to meet a deadline of Aug. 15 to finish writing the constitution. Iraqis will vote on it in October, and national elections will be held in December.
Sunni negotiators said they had agreed to accept the Shiite offer on Tuesday night, when, at a meeting at the home of one of the negotiators, they decided that any further delay could disrupt the December election, and prolong the current transitional government, something they want to avoid. Perhaps more important, they felt that rejecting the offer would simply cement their absence in the political process.
“There was no other alternative,” said Saleh Mutlak, a member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni Arab group that has pressed for a greater Sunni role in politics. “Either we’d be in the political process or we’d be out of it.” Even so, the deal allows for wiggle room. “We can still pull out at any time,” he said.