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Kurds Hint at Hesitation Over New Rule
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's two main Kurdish parties have hinted that they might not participate in the new government if a U.N. resolution on Iraq failed to endorse a constitution. But U.N. officials were hopeful the Kurds would accept the measure adopted late Tuesday. The resolution makes no mention of the Transitional Administration Law, which will serve as Iraq's temporary constitution after the new interim government takes power on June 30 and until a new constitution is written and approved in a referendum late next year.

The Kurdish demands were contained in a letter Sunday from Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party to the United Nations. The country's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, had warned of trouble if the Security Council gave any legitimacy to the interim charter, adopted in March.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan threw his support behind the U.S.-British backed resolution. ``It doesn't say anything about the administrative law but it does have language that refers to a united federal democratic Iraq,'' he told reporters after the vote. ``I think they've come up with a resolution which is equitable and fair and I think all sides should be able to work with it.''

A PUK official, Araz Talabany, said Tuesday that the letter asked that reference to the interim constitution be made in the Security Council resolution providing international legitimacy to U.S. plans for transferring power to the Iraqis. ``They said that in the future they might not participate in the government or in the coming elections'' planned by Jan. 31 if the new resolution failed to mention the interim resolution, the aide said before the U.N. vote. Talabany, the aide, said the interim constitution stipulates from some Kurdish rights, such as federalism. ``What they are asking for is the least of the rights of the Kurdish people.'' he said.

In his own letter to the United Nations, al-Sistani said that any effort to give legitimacy to the interim charter, known as the Transitional Administrative Law, by mentioning it in the Iraq resolution ``runs counter to the will of the Iraqi people.'' ``This law, which has been written by an unelected council under the occupation and its direct influence, restricts the national (body) due to be elected at the beginning of the new year to draft Iraq's permanent constitution,'' al-Sistani said. ``This runs against law and is rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people.''
"The will of the Iraqi people is what I say it is!"
Al-Sistani objected to the interim constitution because it was not drafted by an elected body but was instead approved by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He has insisted that the interim charter should not tie the hands of a future elected body that will draft a permanent constitution next year.

The Kurds won a major concession in the interim constitution which states that if a majority of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject the permanent charter, it will not be approved. Kurds control three provinces. Shiites complain that gives a veto to an ethnic community which forms about 15 percent of the population. Shiites are believed to comprise about 60 percent.
Posted by: Steve White 2004-06-09
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=35020