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Iraq's Sunnis alarmed at Shiite demands for autonomy
BAGHDAD (AFX) - Iraq's ousted Sunni Arab elite expressed alarm after the country's Shiite majority made a surprise move towards Kurdish-style autonomy, just days before a crucial deadline for agreement on a new constitution.
Yesterday's call from leading Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim for autonomy in Shiite areas of south and central Iraq angered Sunni Arab leaders, who said it could derail the entire political process.
'We are shocked and scared by the demand for autonomy as expressed by my Shiite brothers,' said Salah al-Motlag, a key Sunni member of the constitutional drafting committee.
'The timing of the demand is wrong with just three days left to go for the deadline. Such demands can delay the constitution and Iraq could be without a constitution for another year.'
Sunni politicians denounced Hakim's comments as aiming to derail a constitutional agreement, while Sunni religious leaders strongly condemned the proposal of a Shiite autonomous zone.
'That Iraq is divided into cantons is what the Jews and our enemies want,' said Sheikh Mehdi Al-Sulaimi, a member of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, during Friday prayers at the group's main mosque in Baghdad.
Sunnis are afraid the creation of federally-autonomous zones will prevent them from taking an equal share of Iraq's lucrative oil reserves, predominantly located in the country's Kurdish north and Shiite south.
'We call for reason from those clamouring to break up (Iraq) ... we, in the centre of the country, do not want an autonomous zone,' Sulaimi said.
The emerging consensus between Kurds and Shiites on a federal constitution leaves only the Sunni Arabs at odds on one of the key sticking points in the drafting of the new charter.
Opposition from the Sunnis could still scupper the new constitution as the interim rules stipulate the charter can be rejected by a two-thirds majority in any three provinces. Three -- Al-Anbar, Tamim and Salaheddin -- are predominantly Sunni.
Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush cranked up the pressure for Iraq's leaders to agree on a constitution before the August 15 deadline, provoking criticism from the New York Times.
'Since this constitution will help determine whether Iraq holds together and whether the ultimate result of American military intervention will be freedom and democracy or a new religious tyranny, it would have been wiser to allow time for compromise and consensus,' the Times said in an editorial.
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Abdel Aziz Hakimfile photo
Most points of disagreement on Iraq's new constitution have been ironed out, and the constitution should be ready before the Monday deadline, the President Jalal Talabani said in an announcement Saturday morning.

"The meetings are still going on and we have gone forward," Talabani told reporters. "There is a meeting today and another meeting tomorrow and God willing we will finish the job tomorrow." 

The largest disagreement is over the governing the Kurdish and Shiite areas of central and southern Iraq, as well as the role of Islam in the state.  

Constitutional committee members have said the remaining major stumbling blocks were federalism, a Kurds-style autonomy given sudden Shiite support by the call from its leading politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Sunni groups have called the move for federalism a deal breaker.

The controversy caused by the sudden Sunni call for federalism cast doubt on the chances for approval of the constitution draft by Monday's deadline. Sunnis fear that federal-autonomy zones will keep them from a share of the world's second largest known oil reserves. Those are concentrated in the Kurdish north and Shiite south.

But a Sunni participant Saleh al-Mutlaq said on Saturday, "An in principle agreement has been reached late yesterday that Iraq's oil revenues will be shared between the Shia, the Kurds and the Sunnis." The federal government would receive a percentage of oil revenues, and the rest would go to each governorate according to its population size."

Sunnis have still not agreed to any of the main points of the constitutional draft, but Kurdish National Assembly member Mahmud Othman said that Kurdish and Shiite groups could use their majority in the parliament to get the charter approved by Iraq's legislature.

The United States has played a strong role in the 71-member constitution committee writing the document described as the Transitional Administrative Law. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has acted as a broker between the Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab blocs.