LONDON,
August 30, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Arab League
Secretary General Amr Moussa has said that parts of the Iraqi draft
constitution are a “recipe for chaos.”
“I
don't buy this and I find in this a true recipe for chaos and perhaps
a catastrophe in Iraq and around it,” he told the BBC’s World
Today program Monday, August 29.
He
added the Arab League shares Iraqi Sunnis concerns over federalism,
which would divide the Arab country.
Shiites
and Kurdish negotiators endorsed the document Sunday, August 28, but
Sunni framers refused to put their names to it over federalism and
other sticking points. They now took the battle to a referendum on
October 15.
They
fear the proposals would lead to the break-up of the country into a
Kurdish north and Shiite south, depriving the Sunnis of access to the
country's oil resources.
Sunnis
are currently registering in numbers to vote on October 15.
They
are a majority in Al-Anbar, Nineveh and Salaheddin provinces and
Iraq's interim law stipulates that the draft fails if two-thirds of
any three provinces vote against it during the planned referendum.
Arab
Identity
Moussa,
who once described the draft as “dangerous,” further said he was
concerned that the draft text denies Iraq's Arab identity.
“I
do not believe in this division between Shiite and Sunni and Muslims
and Christians and Arabs and Kurds,” he said.
The
text of the draft constitution says Iraq is “part of the Islamic
world and its Arab people are part of the Arab nation,” an apparent
concession to non-Arab minorities like the Kurds.
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"There's hopeful developments in Iraq," Bush said. (Reuters)
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Sunni
negotiators wanted the text to say that Iraq as a whole is part of the
Arab world.
A
Sunni Arab delegate on the drafting committee said all his colleagues
on the panel objected to the “American” draft.
“We
have not agreed on this constitution. We have objections which are the
same as we had from day one,” Hussein Al-Falluji told Reuters.
“If
there is no forging of the results, I believe the people will say 'No'
to the 'American' constitution.”
One
of Iraq's biggest Arab Sunni parties said Monday that it might back
the draft constitution but still wants changes.
“We
have not signed the constitution and we still have the time starting
from now until the referendum comes. We might say yes to the
constitution if the disputed points are resolved,” said Tareq
Al-Hashemi, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party.
On
the other hand, US President George W. Bush said Monday that violence
in Iraq "breaks my heart," but he declared himself
"very optimistic" about the country's future and a
constitutional referendum come October.
"I'm
very optimistic about Iraq because, first of all, I believe, deep in
everybody's soul, is the desire to be free," the president said
during a brief trip in Arizona to promote his health care policy.
"There's
hopeful developments in Iraq. I know that you see violence on your TV
screens and it breaks my heart to see the death of innocent life
there. But that's the only thing the terrorists have got going for
them," he said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
For
most of August, Bush has been besieged at his Texas ranch by anti-war
protesters calling for a swift withdrawal from Iraq, led by Cindy
Sheehan, whose soldier son Casey was killed there in April 2004.
The
administration has been counting on political progress in Iraq to
vindicate policies that polls show have become increasingly unpopular
in the face of a raging insurgency and rising US death toll.
