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Sunni Arabs Endorse 15 for Iraq Committee
 Iraq's Sunni Arabs endorsed a list of 15 men Thursday to represent the minority on a Shiite-dominated committee drafting the new constitution. The agreement removes the final obstacle hampering efforts to get the minority's representatives to sit on the committee, which has just until mid-August to draft a charter to guide Iraq in the post-Saddam Hussein era. The list of 15 was approved by a group of 50 Sunni Arab religious, tribal and political leaders who met in Iraq's old parliament building in downtown Baghdad. They and a single representative of Iraq's small Sabian community, will sit on a special committee that will be formed in tandem with an existing 55-member body exclusively made up of elected legislators."The atmosphere in the meeting was very cordial," said Abdul-Rahman al-Noami, one of the two Sunni Arab legislators on the 55-member committee. "We cannot satisfy everyone on the Sunni street but I can say that we have achieved about 90 percent of this and that's excellent." The 71-member group will make decisions on the constitution through consensus and send them to the other group for ratification. The awkward setup was necessitated by a Sunni Arab decision to boycott the Jan. 30 elections, leaving them with just 17 legislators in the 275-member parliament. An additional 13 Sunni Arabs also joined the parallel committee, but only in an advisory capacity. Posted by: Fred 2005-06-24 |
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