US President George W. Bush has urged Shiites to make concessions to Sunni Arabs on two key points -- federalism and Saddam Hussein's party -- to win Sunni support for Iraq's constitution, a Shiite official said yesterday following a third extension of the deadline to approve the document.
US officials have also appealed to the country's powerful Shiite clergy, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to help resolve the standoff, said Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite member of the committee drafting the charter.
Shiite negotiators agreed to study suggested changes to the document yesterday after parliament speaker Hajim al-Hassani announced officials would try again to reach unanimity after the latest deadline passed at midnight the day before.
On Thursday, Shiite officials said they believed talks were at a standstill and there was no legal requirement anyway to have parliament vote on a draft approved last Monday by the Shiites and Kurds.
Al-Adeeb said yesterday that Bush personally telephoned Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and asked him to make compromises on parts of the constitution that would purge former members of Saddam's Sunni-dominated Baath Party from government jobs and political life and on federalism, which the Sunnis strongly oppose.
Al-Adeeb said al-Hakim told the president that the Shiite bloc was made up of several groups "and they might reject the constitution if the article on the Baath Party is removed."
Bush's intercession was bound to carry signficant weight but it was unclear whether it would be enough to sway the Shiites, especially on the Baath party issue. Shiites suffered under Saddam and hatred for the party runs deep.
Al-Hakim himself lost numerous close relatives to Saddam's purges.
Al-Sistani and the Shiites have bedeviled the Americans over the constitution issue since the early weeks of the occupation.
The Bush administration had wanted a constitution written quickly and in 2003 suggested a panel of Iraqi legal experts draft it. But the powerful al-Sistani decreed that no constitution written by unelected officials was acceptable and the US dropped the idea.
US officials then wanted the document written by an assembly whose members would be chosen in a series of regional caucuses. Al-Sistani objected to caucuses and that idea was dropped.
And it is ironic that the Americans are calling on the Shiites, who suffered terribly under Saddam, to make concessions over the purging of Saddam's allies.
That suggests the Bush administration is anxious for some kind of constitution as a sign of progress at a time of growing disaffection within the US over the Iraq mission.
Sunni Arabs fear that federalism will lead to the breakup of the country and deprive them of oil wealth, concentrated in the Shiite south and the north, much of it in areas the Kurds rule or want to incorporate.
But Kurds and the majority Shiites bitterly recall decades of oppression at the hands of Saddam's Sunni-dominated dictatorship. They believe federalism is the best way to prevent a new dictator.
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