Posted on 02/29/2004 8:15:44 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Today: February 29, 2004 at 19:10:38 PST
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -
Iraqi officials reached agreement early Monday on the draft of an interim constitution and will probably sign the document after a Shiite Muslim religious holiday ends, a spokesman for a member of the Iraqi Governing Council said.
Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for council member Ahmad Chalabi, said the meeting ended at 4:20 a.m. with "full agreement ... on each article." Qanbar expected the document to be signed Wednesday - one day after the end of the Shiite feast Ashoura.
Top U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, who was closely involved in the final days of negotiation, must then approve the document.
Qanbar said the draft charter will recognize Islam as "a source of legislation" - rather than "the" source as some officials had sought - and that no law will be passed that violates the tenets of the Muslim religion.
The draft charter accepts the principle of federalism but leaves it up to a future elected national assembly to decide the details of self-rule for the Kurdish minority. It allows the current Kurdish autonomy government to continue "under a united Iraq," Qanbar said.
The document also sets aside for women 25 percent of the seats in the provisional legislature, he said.
"The atmosphere was very constructive," he said of the long day of negotiations "Alternative language and creative ways were brought to the table to come out with consensus on each issue."
The issue of the role of Islam in the constitution was a contentious one throughout three nights of talks. Conservatives wanted Islamic law to be the principle source of legislation - phrasing that Bremer had hinted he would veto.
"There was an agreement among all council members that Iraq will not be an Islamic state," Qanbar said. "The language was put in a way not to offend the Islamic identity of most of the people but nor to offend the other side and give the impression that it's an Islamic state."
Members Governing Council had been holding marathon meetings for days trying to overcome serious divisions over the interim constitution, a key step in U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30.
Meanwhile, Polish soldiers sprayed a bus with gunfire after it crashed into a checkpoint outside the holy city of Karbala, where Shiite Muslims are holding their most important festival of the year.
Eight Iranian pilgrims, an Iraqi civil defense trooper and a Pole were injured, police and emergency officials said. But Polish officials denied there were any pilgrims in the bus and said they appeared to have thwarted a terrorist attack.
Coalition forces have stepped up security around southern cities during the Ashoura festival, as 1.5 million Shiite pilgrims - including about 100,000 Iranians - converge on the shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf. The festival marks the death of Imam Hussein, a Shiite saint and grandson of the prophet Muhammad.
The bus, apparently having brake troubles, hit a minivan and swerved into a concrete barrier at the checkpoint manned by Polish and Iraqi security forces, witnesses said. Polish troops apparently thought the speeding vehicle was making a suicide attack. Bloodied bodies were seen being taken out of the bus, riddled with bullets.
Further south, U.S. soldiers fired on a car that failed to stop when a military convoy passed by, killing one Iraqi and critically injuring another near Rumaythah, 135 miles south of Baghdad.
Afterward, hundreds of Iraqis gathered at the site, chanting "Down with America! Down with Bush!" and pelting U.S. soldiers and Dutch marines with rocks.
In northwest Baghdad, a homemade bomb exploded, killing an Estonian soldier. He was the first Estonian soldier killed by hostile fire since the country gained independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Amazing what resolve will accomplish over time.
Several other countries in the coalition have lost soldiers in Iraq, and have their people on the line. It can be easy to lose sight of that with all the attention on France & Co.
The rare justified use of affirmative-action.
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