U.S. "concession" on Islam said to turn Iraq talks :: Iraq

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August 20, 2005

U.S. "concession" on Islam said to turn Iraq talks

Topics: Iraq

Has the U.S. changed it's position on Islamic law being the order of law in Iraq? This Reuters article in SwissInfo points to that being the case:

(Reuters) - U.S. concessions to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraqi law marked a turn in talks on a constitution, negotiators said on Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline under intense U.S. pressure to clinch a deal.

U.S. diplomats, who have insisted the constitution must enshrine ideals of equal rights and democracy, declined comment.

Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.

But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam not "a" but "the" main source of law -- a reversal of interim legal arrangements -- and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.

"We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want."

Washington, with 140,000 troops still in Iraq, has insisted Iraqis are free to govern themselves but yet made clear it will not approve the kind of clerical rule seen in Shi'ite Iran, a state U.S. President George W. Bush describes as "evil".

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been shepherding intensive meetings since parliament averted its own dissolution on Monday by giving constitution drafters another week to resolve crucial differences over regional autonomy and division of oil revenues.

Failing to finish by midnight on August 22 could provoke new elections and, effectively, a return to the drawing board for the entire constitutional process. But a further extension may be more likely, as Washington insists the charter is key to its strategy to undermine the Sunni revolt and leave a new Iraqi government largely to fend for itself after U.S. troops go home.

An official of one of the main Shi'ite Islamist parties in the interim government confirmed the deal on law and Islam.

Although the talks are continuing, it doesn't look promising for the Sunnis to be able to block the Islamists from establishing Sharia as the rule of law in Iraq - something that Iran has been pushing for through it's agents in Iraq, radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr being among them. In the article we learn that about a dozen senior leaders representing the Shi'ite Islamist-led interim government, secular Shi'ite former prime minister Iyad Allawi, Kurds and Sunnis, are still locked in debate today, and that Sunni leaders, with whom Sadr has maintained warmer ties than have much of the Shi'ite establishment, called the proposal an Iranian project to break up Iraq.

Iran's fingers are deep in the pie of Iraq, which is in dire need of being sectioned under Federalism, in order to bring the country together. But for the U.S. to support a role for Islam as the basis for the law in Iraq, knowing the absolute disaster to individual freedoms and human rights next door in Iran, is absurd.

It looks like we're going to have to wait a bit to find out what is really meant by the phrase, "parliament could pass no legislation that "contradicted Islamic principles.""

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Other coverage - Chad at IntheBullPen

Posted by Richard at August 20, 2005 9:56 AM

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