IRAQ: Thousands of Arab Sunnis took to the streets of Iraq yesterday to demonstrate against the country's draft constitution, but a moderate Sunni group hinted that it might back the constitution in a referendum due in October.
Crowds in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit waved placards of the former president and vowed to defeat a constitution which they said betrayed the once-dominant Sunni minority.
US helicopters hovered overhead as the 2,000-strong rally assembled outside the office of the Muslim Scholars' Association, a group of hardline clerics which has urged a No vote in the referendum.
Although tension with the Shia community has fuelled the Sunni insurgency, some protesters even held up pictures of Shia clerics who have joined the Sunnis in rejecting the constitution endorsed by the ruling Shia and Kurd coalition. Sunnis opposed to the constitution have found common cause with maverick Shias such as Moqtada al-Sadr, who reject a federal state.
Resentment surged yesterday over reports that 36 bodies found bound and shot south of Baghdad last week were not Shia soldiers, as first claimed, but Sunni men abducted by the security forces. Separately, police said that they had recovered 13 bodies in three western towns.
On Sunday, Shia and Kurdish negotiators gave up trying to win over the Sunnis and endorsed a constitutional text which will be put to voters on October 15th.
The Sunni delegates said it was a recipe for breaking Iraq up into autonomous regions, diminishing its Arab heritage, alienating the Sunnis and facilitating Iranian meddling.
Yesterday, however, the Iraqi Islamic Party, a moderate group, said that although the draft did not meet its aspirations, there was still room for negotiation. "We have not signed the constitution and we still have the time, starting from now, until the referendum comes," party spokesman Tareq al-Hashemi told a news conference. "We might say Yes to the constitution if the disputed points are resolved."
Some observers interpreted this as a veiled plea for a Yes vote. But with five million copies of the document due to be printed this week, changes to it are unlikely.
The BBC quoted Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa as describing the Iraqi draft constitution as "dangerous".
President Jalal Talabani urged Iraqis to vote Yes in the referendum, but acknowledged that rejection by Sunni voters was a possibility. "If they [ Sunni voters] do participate, then the constitution will [ probably] fail, and new elections will have to take place to create a new drafting committee to come up with a new constitution," he told Al Arabiya television.
A western diplomat said that some moderates saw the constitution as balanced - albeit flawed - thanks to eleventh-hour changes which deferred contentious details to the next parliament. But they did not dare to speak out openly. One politician has received a warning note which included the line: "Regards to your two daughters."
Although accounting for just one-fifth of the 26 million population, Sunnis may be able to get a two-thirds majority in three of 18 provinces, which would constitute a veto. - (Guardian Service)
Reuters yesterday demanded the immediate release of an Iraqi cameraman still being held by US forces in Baghdad more than a day after being wounded in an incident in which his soundman was killed.
Iraqi police said that the news team was shot at by US soldiers.
The US military said it was investigating and refused to say what questions it was putting to cameraman Haider Kadhem. It would not say where he was held or identify the unit holding him.
"Reuters demands the immediate release of Haider Kadhem," global managing editor David Schlesinger said. "We fail to understand what reason there can be for his continued detention more than a day after he was the innocent victim of an incident in which his colleague was killed."