BAGHDAD, Feb. 20 --
Kurdish leaders are refusing to accept key provisions
of an interim Iraqi constitution drafted by the Bush
administration and instead are demanding far broader
autonomy, including the right to control military
forces in Kurdish areas and the freedom to reject laws
passed by the national government, Kurdish officials
said Friday.
The position adopted by
the Kurds, an ethnic group that accounts for about 20
percent of Iraq's predominantly Arab population,
threatens to block approval of the interim
constitution by Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing
Council and deal another setback to the Bush
administration's effort to create a sovereign
transitional government. Arab leaders oppose almost
all of the Kurds' demands, which would effectively
preserve an autonomous Kurdish mini-state in northern
Iraq with its own army, laws, tax system, judiciary
and parliament.
Although the Bush
administration also opposes many of the Kurdish
demands, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul
Bremer, has spent the past week holding urgent
meetings with Kurdish and Arab politicians to forge a
compromise. But neither side appears willing to make
substantial concessions, according to Kurdish and Arab
officials. Iraqi Arabs contend that the Kurds should
not receive special privileges; Kurds insist they are
unwilling to give up many of the rights they enjoyed
during 12 years of virtual independence that began
after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"Our side is seeking a
voluntary union with Iraq, but this voluntary union
comes with the precondition that the system of
government in Iraq is both federal and democratic,
allowing us to maintain the local control we have had
for more than a decade," said Qabad Talabani, the son
of Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.
Iraqi Arabs view the
Kurdish proposal as the first step toward the division
of Iraq into separate states. "These ideas don't
strike me as leading to one integrated nation," said
Faisal Istrabadi, a senior aide to Adnan Pachachi, an
Arab member of the Governing Council.
The interim
constitution being considered by the council was
written by Bush administration officials in
conjunction with Istrabadi, a trial lawyer who lives
in the Chicago area, and Salem Chalabi, a lawyer who
is a nephew of former exile leader Ahmed Chalabi,
another council member.
Drafters of the
document plan to meet on Saturday to discuss the
Kurdish demands and a variety of other changes
suggested by Arab council members. The Bush
administration wants the interim constitution to be
completed by Feb. 28, although several Iraqis involved
in the process have said they believe negotiations
will continue beyond the deadline.
"We have reached some
of the most contentious issues about the future of our
country," one participant on the drafting committee
said. "Reaching an agreement will not be easy."
While the
administration remains committed to a federal system
of government for Iraq, Bremer and other U.S.
officials want the Kurds to soften their position on
autonomy out of concern that a hard-line stance will
alienate Iraq's two main groups of Arabs. Sunni Muslim
Arabs, who live predominantly in provinces directly
south of Kurdish areas, are worried about Kurdish
demands to reestablish control in areas where former
president Saddam Hussein's government moved large
numbers of Arabs during a decades-long campaign to
drive out Kurds. Shiite Muslim Arabs, who live farther
south and comprise about 60 percent of the country's
population, fear that the Kurdish position will weaken
Iraq's eventual national government, which the Shiites
expect to control.
"Finding a way to
accommodate the Kurds without angering the Arabs is
the essential challenge in keeping Iraq whole," said a
U.S. official involved in the political transition.
"What kind of
federalism will we have? How strong will autonomy be?"
asked Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni Arab member of the
Governing Council. "It's like a medicine. If you take
the right amount, it can cure you, but if you overdose
on it, it can kill you."
The Kurdish demands
were outlined in a four-page proposed additional
chapter to the interim constitution that was posted
Friday on the Web site of the Kurdistan Regional
Government.
A central component of
the document is the retention of local control over
Kurdish militiamen, known as pesh merga, who
would be organized into a new force called the Iraqi
Kurdistan National Guard. The proposal calls for the
Kurdish parliament to "raise, regulate, recruit and
officer" the national guard. Although Kurdish leaders
are willing to allow the guard units to fall under the
nominal authority of a civilian defense minister in
Baghdad, effective command would rest with the Kurdish
regional government.
The document also bars
the deployment of soldiers from other parts of the
country in Kurdish areas without the approval of the
Kurdish parliament.
"It is a guarantee for
the self-defense of the Kurdish people," said Rowsch
Shaways, the president of the regional parliament, the
Kurdistan National Assembly.
The pesh merga, which
mounted a long-running resistance to Hussein's
government, have been the only armed Iraqi force in
the Kurdish areas since the areas became autonomous.
Because U.S. troops could not enter Iraq from Turkey
during last year's war, the pesh merga provided a
northern front in the military campaign to topple
Hussein's government. Since the war, the pesh merga
have continued to provide security in Kurdish areas.
During three decades in
power, Hussein ordered his army to conduct a series of
military operations against the Kurds, whom he deemed
subversive. Kurdish officials say that more than
180,000 Kurds were killed in the attacks, some of
which involved chemical weapons.
"The people of
Kurdistan will not accept the new Iraqi army to be
deployed in the region of Kurdistan at this moment in
time," Qabad Talabani said. "It's an unfortunate
reality we face."
The interim
constitution as drafted would ban any armed group that
is not part of the country's official security
services. The Bush administration wants the pesh merga
to be folded into the new Iraqi army or civil defense
units, both of which would be controlled by the
national government.
Although U.S. officials
said they acknowledge the contributions of the pesh
merga in fighting Hussein's army, they contend that
placing the Kurdish militia under local control could
set a precedent for other parts of the country,
particularly in the Shiite-dominated south, where more
than 10,000 militiamen affiliated with the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq have
resisted U.S. calls to disband.
"The [Kurdish] proposal
up to this point has essentially amounted to having
two states with two standing armies but without a
unified command structure," Istrabadi said. "That
doesn't strike me as an outstanding idea."
Kurdish leaders are
also insisting that laws that do not pertain to
foreign policy or other subjects clearly in the domain
of the national government must be ratified by the
Kurdistan National Assembly before they can take
effect in Kurdish areas. Kurdish leaders, who adhere
to a relatively liberal school of Islam, said they
want the freedom to reject any legislation passed by
the national government based on a strict
interpretation of Islamic law.
"It's our insurance
against extremism," Shaways said. "If the majority of
people in Iraq want a religious government, we should
have the right to keep our secular government if our
population wants that."
Kurdish leaders want to
maintain their own judiciary with its own penal code.
They also want to require that Iraq's permanent
constitution, which will be put to a national
referendum, also receive the approval of a majority in
Kurdistan.
Two other Kurdish
demands are of particular concern to Iraqi Arabs:
local control of oil revenue and efforts to redress
the eviction of Kurds from their homes by Hussein's
government. The Kurds' proposal stipulates that all
natural resources in Kurdistan belong to the Kurdish
regional administration, which would receive a share
of Iraq's oil sales in proportion to the number of
Kurds in the country's population.
Kurdish leaders also
want the interim constitution to codify a process for
displaced Kurds to return to their homes and for
redrawing the boundaries of the disputed province of
Kirkuk, which was gerrymandered by Hussein's
government to reduce its Kurdish population. "We need
to reverse Saddam's ethnic-cleansing policies,"
Talabani said.
That goal has provoked
angry complaints from Sunni Arabs. "What they're
proposing is a very dangerous land grab," Yawar said.
Kurdish leaders said
they were under intense pressure from their
constituents not to compromise during the
negotiations. Talabani said nearly 2 million Kurds had
signed a petition calling for a referendum on
independence.
"We have a street to
worry about," he said. "We can't be seen to be selling
out."
