Rice, in Baghdad, Urges Sunni Role in Constitution

[Snowden]

May 16, 2005
Rice, in Baghdad, Urges Sunni Role in Constitution

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.


BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 15 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Iraq on Sunday to urge its new Shiite-dominated government to greatly increase the involvement of Sunni Arabs in writing the Iraqi constitution, amid growing administration alarm that a chance to draw the Sunni minority into Iraq's new democracy is slipping away.

On a trip that underscored Washington's urgency, Ms. Rice carried a clear message: Shiite political leaders should respond rapidly and effectively to any sign that wavering elements of the Sunni Arab insurgency might be ready to turn to peace.

Ms. Rice, in an interview, said she had told the leaders here that their efforts to punish Sunni Arabs linked to the old government must "respect the fact that there now needs to be an inclusive Iraqi process and an inclusive Iraqi government."

She also warned Syria, accusing it of "standing in the way of the Iraqi people's desire for peace."

"There are very deep concerns about Iraq's neighbors," she said, "and I heard particular concerns about Syria, about the gathering of terrorist networks there and the transiting of those networks across the Syrian border."

The warning followed a week of fighting by a 1,000-strong Marine battle group along the Syrian border. Commanders said that they had killed at least 125 insurgents but that groups of insurgents had also fled to safety in Syria. "Syria is badly out of step in the region," she said.

The anxious atmosphere surrounding Ms. Rice's journey was compounded by a further wave of the violence that has shaken the new government. Iraqi officials announced the discovery of 46 bodies at sites in and near Baghdad, three suicide bombings and three shootings, including one that killed a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most revered Shiite cleric.

The secretary of state's journey - on a C-17 military transport aircraft, with shorter hops in Iraq aboard helicopter gunships - included a stop in northern Iraq to talk to Massoud Barzani, the powerful Kurdish leader. Kurds are the Shiites' principal partners in the new government.

From there, she flew to Baghdad, for meetings in the heavily fortified Green Zone complex that included Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, American military leaders and Jaafari aides, including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi and Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi.

In an interview after the talks, Ms. Rice said she had specifically cautioned the Iraqis that de-Baathification - the process Shiite hard-liners favor of purging the government and the new armed forces of all who served at senior levels under Saddam Hussein - should not be so severe as to impede the creation of an "inclusive" government.

She said she also made clear that the Bush administration was deeply concerned that the parliamentary committee drafting the new Iraqi constitution had only 2 Sunni Arabs among its 55 members.

American officials, she told the Iraqi leaders, have "concerns about the committee that was appointed and the Sunni representation on that committee."

With the 12-hour visit, Ms. Rice became the highest-ranking American official to visit Iraq since the January elections. The vote, which drew millions of Iraqis to the polls, was seen as a major boost to the American plan to build a Western-style democracy here.

But that political momentum was largely lost in the three months of negotiating and maneuvering it took for the new government to emerge, and a brief lull in violence has given way to one of the war's bloodiest passages, with at least 70 car bombings and nearly 500 people killed over the past two weeks.

In the days before Ms. Rice set out on her 14,000-mile round trip, senior Bush administration officials had signaled a growing sense of disquiet that Dr. Jaafari and other senior Shiite leaders might be backing away from pledges to make the new government into an instrument for bridging the country's deep schisms.

But the Sunni Arabs with links to the Baathist past are the exact people who could help reach out to insurgent leaders, including Sunni tribal chiefs, who, American officials say, have sent preliminary signals that they may be ready to negotiate.

"The insurgents in Iraq are very violent, but you defeat them not just through military effort," Ms. Rice told reporters traveling with her on Sunday. "You defeat them by having a political alternative that is strong." Now, she added, Iraqi leaders are "going to have to intensify their efforts to demonstrate that in fact the political process is the answer for the Iraqi people."

While American officials have voiced apprehensions in recent days, Ms. Rice's comments were the most explicit and forceful public remarks.

Ms. Rice's strategy appeared to be to try to win the Kurdish leaders' backing for a more conciliatory attitude toward Sunni Arabs.

The Jaafari government's relations with Sunni Arab leaders were jarred even before it took office, with the Shiite leaders vetoing a wide array of Sunni nominees to the new cabinet before agreeing to seven slots in the 35-member ministry for Sunni officials who have been disparaged within their own community as Shiite pawns.

Ms. Rice praised Dr. Jaafari for "a very good job of including Sunnis" in the cabinet, including Mr. Dulaimi.

The cabinet led by Dr. Jaafari is dominated by Shiite Arabs in a coalition with Kurds, who are mainly Sunni. Sunni Arabs have a much smaller role. That is roughly representative of Iraq's ethnic and religious makeup, but a senior State Department official said Sunday that Ms. Rice felt the constitutional committee, with only two Sunni Arabs, was "more restrictive" and would create problems. "There are several stages to the constitution-writing process, and one of her messages was that these stages can be more inclusive," the official said.

American officials have encouraged the Iraqis to create subcommittees that would take over much of the duties of drafting the constitution and place Sunnis on those panels. On Sunday, a top Shiite parliamentary aide, Ali al-Dabagh, said lawmakers were moving in that direction.

"We are trying to include those who do not have enough representation, including Arab Sunnis, in such a way that they do not feel that they are only consultants to the process," Mr. Dabagh said.

American and some Iraqi officials are worried that a constitution that does not take Sunni concerns into account could fail. That would happen if two-thirds of the voters in 3 or more of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it during the referendum scheduled for October. Sunnis dominate in 3 provinces.

Many Shiite leaders, particularly those of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Islamist party, strongly favor exhaustive de-Baathification. In the early stages of the occupation, American officials in Baghdad also favored wide purges of Baathists.

Dr. Jaafari and other Shiite political leaders are trying to balance the urgings of American officials with the demands for justice by their constituents, who were widely persecuted under Mr. Hussein and the Sunni Baathists.

A senior aide to Dr. Jaafari, Laith Kubba, said Sunday that de-Baathification early in the American-led occupation "unfairly treated large numbers of people who should have stayed in their jobs."

But Mr. Kubba also outlined a number of planned steps to assure Iraqis that they will not be victimized as they were under Mr. Hussein. They included the reinstatement of the death penalty; the imposition of harsh criminal and financial penalties against anyone giving "refuge" to or sponsoring a terrorist or insurgent; and a crackdown on bribery of border guards who have allowed foreign fighters to infiltrate Iraq.

"The will is there to take a much firmer hand," Mr. Kubba said.

Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and John F. Burns and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedy from Baghdad.

• Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/in...html?th&emc=th