Iraq statute panel readies report

A committee that is debating how to draft a new constitution is leaving the crucial question of how to choose constitutional convention delegates to the 24-member Iraqi Governing Council, all but assuring that it will be a month or two before the process begins.

At stake in deciding how to choose the drafters of the constitution is the amount of influence Iraq's most radical religious elements are likely to have. The two best-organised groups in Iraq now are clerics and former members of Saddam Hussain's Baath Party. Other than Baathists, secular political figures have yet to gain a national following.

The committee, which will likely submit its report to the governing council today, could suggest as many as seven options, according to council members and Western diplomats close to the process.

They will range from holding an election to choose the roughly 100 to 150 people who will draft the constitution to appointing delegates. There will also be recommendations for how to combine the two options, electing some members and appointing others. And there may be an option for a temporary or interim constitution.

It is expected that once the drafters are chosen, they will take about six months to write the constitution, which will then be put to a national referendum. After that, there will be a political campaign for the country's elected offices and then the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority would hand over full power to the Iraqis.

The writing of the constitution "will be like a battle," said Saad Shakir, a deputy to governing council member Adnan Pachachi, adding that if an election were held now for drafters of the constitution, "we (would) have an Islamic republic immediately".

"There is a degree of polarization on the council about whether to elect or select," agreed Samir Sumaiday, a council member who is firmly in the "select" camp.

The council chose the 25-member committee, made up primarily of judges, lawyers and other legal experts, to travel around the country for several weeks to hear what procedures Iraqis want to follow to draft their constitution. The panel's chairman is a prominent Kurd, Fouad Massum.

Those who write the constitution will be faced with trying to satisfy an array of religious and ethnic groups on questions including the role of Islamic law and the extent to which the country's federal states will be configured along ethnic lines. For the past 23 years, Saddam Hussain and the Revolutionary Command Council that he led had the final word.

The main supporters of an election for delegates are devout Shiites. Shiites, who are thought to make up at least 60 per cent of the population, are far from monolithic, but they respect the edicts of prominent Shiite ayatollahs, most notably Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who issued a religious ruling earlier this summer that the drafters of the constitution must be elected.

One view is that Sistani issued his edict to ensure that Shiites had a majority hand in writing the constitution, but it is also true that Iraqis are worried that Americans will hijack the process of writing the constitution.

The US civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer, III, repeatedly made public assurances that that would not be the case. Although the Iraqis' fears the US will dominate the process have diminished, they persist to some degree.