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As Talks Continue, Many Iraqis Lack Copy of Charter
Booklets explaining the draft constitution are handed out at a food rationing center in Baghdad even as heated negotiations continued over its content.
(By Thaier Al-sudani -- Reuters)
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In Ramadi -- capital of the heavily Sunni province of Anbar, one of the centers of the insurgency -- residents accused the central government Monday of deliberately preventing them from seeing the proposed constitution.
"Let us read it so we can give our opinion!" said a slogan on one of the banners carried by hundreds of demonstrators. Another promised: "We will go to the referendum even if we do not see your constitution."
Sunnis generally say they will vote against the constitution. While the majority of Sunnis heeded boycott calls and insurgent warnings not to vote in January's national elections, Sunni leaders are calling on their people to enter the post-Hussein political process for the first time to try to vote down the charter. Even some militias in the Sunni-based insurgency have pledged to suspend attacks to allow Sunnis to turn out to defeat the charter.
Voter rejection would mean Iraq would elect another temporary assembly in December charged with drafting another constitution.
"We feel there is a wicked game that aims to block the Sunni from voting in the referendum by not distributing the constitution draft," said Omar Khalifa, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni group that organized the protest in Ramadi.
Unsafe roads and attacks on government officials and election workers may have prevented distribution in the outlands. But even in Baghdad, comparatively few have seen the charter. "I haven't decided yet whether to vote or not," said Khalid Salim, a baker in central Baghdad. "I've read so little of it -- only what was published in the newspaper. Most of the people here do not understand it very well."
Other neighborhoods had copies of the draft distributed with monthly household ration baskets.
Excitement over the charter seems low, and officials' ongoing deal-making -- long after the Aug. 15 deadline for a draft and weeks after the transitional parliament approved a supposedly final version for a national vote -- has fostered a perception among many that the constitution will mean whatever politicians want it to mean.
Despite the complications of continued negotiations, Americans are pushing for compromises that could win Sunni support for the charter, in hopes of ending the insurgency through political means.
"Americans are working very hard to work out something," said Othman, the Kurdish official. Meetings on Monday for Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, included a session with Saleh Mutlak, one of the most unbending of the Sunni constitution negotiators.
Special correspondent Bassam Sebti in Baghdad and staff writer Robin Wright, traveling with Rice, contributed to this report.
