Slip Kid

Not happy


Shiites and Kurds Halt Charter Talks With Sunnis

By DEXTER FILKINS and JAMES GLANZ
Published: August 27, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Saturday, Aug. 27 - Shiite and Kurdish leaders drafting a new Iraqi constitution abandoned negotiations with a group of Sunni representatives on Friday, deciding to take the disputed charter directly to the Iraqi people.

With the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, standing by, Shiite and Kurdish representatives said they had run out of patience with the Sunni negotiators, a group that includes several former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Shiites and Kurds said the Sunnis had refused to budge on a pair of crucial issues that were holding up completion of the constitution.

The Shiites and Kurds reached their decision in meetings that ran late into Friday night, disregarding the Sunnis' pleas for more time.

The Shiite and Kurdish representatives sought to play down the importance of leaving the Sunnis out, saying that with their Baathist links, they had never truly spoken for the broader Sunni population. The Iraqi leaders who drafted the constitution defended it as a document that would ensure the unity of the country and safeguard individual rights.

"The negotiation is finished, and we have a deal," said Ahmad Chalabi, the deputy prime minister and a member of the Shiite leadership. "No one has any more time. It cannot drag on any longer. Most of the Sunnis are satisfied. Everybody made sacrifices. It is an excellent document."

..................

When pressed for the names of Sunnis who would back the draft constitution, representatives of Mr. Chalabi's office suggested Mr. Hassani, the secular Sunni speaker of the National Assembly, and provided his mobile phone number. But Mr. Hassani said he had reached no such conclusion.

"No, no," Mr. Hassani said on his phone. "I never said I am in agreement or disagreement."

In fact, Mr. Hassani said, he still had reservations about several parts of the constitution, including the provisions relating to women's rights. From the Sunni point of view, he said, all that had happened was that the Kurds and the Shiites had sent a new proposal to the Sunnis.

That's a crock of shit.

It boils down to this: Iranian-influenced Shia and seperatist Kurds want to divide the country, in fact, if not in name.

We now have an incontrovertible Bush failure. The Shia seperatists and the Kurds ignored Washington and got their revenge, and the scumbag liar Chalabi is in the mix.

Sadr and the Sunnis want a national Iraq.

Welcome to the Iraqi Civil War.

posted by Steve @ 2:46:00 AM