Baghdad, Iraq – Iraqi leaders submitted a draft constitution to parliament just before their self-imposed midnight deadline on Monday, but disagreement with Sunni leaders and other secular Iraqis left the document incomplete, with fundamental issues still in dispute.
In a legal sleight of hand, the Iraqis decided to give themselves three additional days to close the gaps, despite the requirement in the country’s interim constitution that the document be completed by a deadline, which already had been extended a week.
That left some Iraqis on the 275-member National Assembly wondering whether they were still in charge and some Sunni leaders asserting that the postponement was illegal.
Shiite and Kurdish leaders said they had come close to completing the constitution Monday night, but that they had bogged down over a handful of issues that they believe can be resolved in the next few days. Most of the disputes pitted them against leaders of Iraq’s embittered Sunni minority, who had been shut out of the negotiations for much of the past week.
But the Sunnis were not alone in their opposition; they were joined on some major issues by a group of secular Iraqis, led by Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister. Allawi’s group is concerned about what its members describe as an Islamist-minded coalition of the majority Shiites that is pushing for a large autonomous region in Iraq’s oil-rich south.
Indeed, some Iraqis said Monday that the leaders of the main Shiite coalition, called the United Iraqi Alliance, had intended to cut the Sunnis out of the process altogether and give a completed constitution to the National Assembly over their objections. Allawi and some Kurdish leaders stepped in to block that move.
Whether to allow a large Shiite-dominated autonomous region in southern Iraq, which also contains the largest oil fields, is the principal unresolved issue. Sunni leaders and the secular Shiites say they are concerned that such a huge and powerful autonomous region could lead to the breakup of the country.
When the Sunnis were finally brought into the negotiations Monday afternoon, they promptly rejected several of the constitution’s most fundamental provisions.