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Iraqi Constitution to Be Approved Unchanged
EFL
Shiite Muslim political leaders who had refused to sign the country’s interim constitution said Sunday they would approve the document without changes on Monday despite concerns voiced by the country’s top Shiite cleric. The reversal appeared to end an embarrassing deadlock over a U.S.-backed document that is designed to prepare Iraq for self-government and enshrine broad protections for individual rights. Officials with Iraq’s Governing Council said they hoped to convene a signing ceremony on Monday, resurrecting an event that was canceled on Friday after five Shiite leaders balked at the last minute. A few hours after the Shiite leaders announced their willingness to sign, a car bomb and at least seven rockets exploded a block away from the Baghdad conference center where the ceremony is scheduled to occur. The attack, which injured one person but otherwise caused minimal damage, appeared aimed at Rashid Hotel and the Foreign Ministry building. Both structures are near the edge of the Green Zone, a high-security swath of the capital that houses the headquarters of the U.S. occupation authority.
Interesting. Cause and effect?
The Shiite politicians agreed to change their position after meeting with the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf. In refusing to sign the document on Friday, the politicians said Sistani had rejected two provisions in the interim constitution, one that would give ethnic Kurds effective veto power over a permanent constitution and another that would establish a single president under the transitional administration. After Sunday’s meeting, which lasted for about 30 minutes, a top aide to one of the political leaders said Sistani was not happy with the provisions but would not order the politicians to reject the document. "Sistani has reservations, but it will not constitute an obstacle," Mohammed Hussein Bahr Uloom, a top aide to one of the politicians, told reporters in Najaf. "It will be signed as it was agreed upon before the Governing Council members."
Sistani seems to be in statesman mode again. That's as it should be. With a thriving Iraq, even with religious diversity protected, Iraq is liable to displace Iran as the center of Shiism. That'd make Sistani the most influential holy man in the world, after to the Pope (and well before the Archdruid of Canterbury). Any good things that come Iraq's way will reflect on Najaf, and Sistani won't even have to maintain goon squads.

Posted by: GK 2004-03-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=27621