Iraqi constitution is established

An interim Iraqi constitution, put together after a stormy debate in Baghdad, established a bill of rights and struck compromises on the structure of a future presidency and the role of Islam.

But Iraqis still face the difficult task of deciding how to form the next government.

The document set national elections to be held by January 31, 2005 to create a legislature, with a goal of having women in at least a quarter of the seats.

But negotiators were unable to agree on many aspects of Kurdish autonomy, leaving them to be determined later.

The new constitution, a key step in the US plan to turn over power on June 30, will be signed by top US administrator Paul Bremer and made public on Wednesday after the Shiite Muslim religious holiday of Ashoura, a coalition official said.

The charter will remain in effect until a permanent constitution is drafted and ratified next year.

With approval of the interim constitution, the last remaining step is to decide how to constitute a new government to take power from the US-led occupation authority on June 30.

Iraq’s Governing Council will draft an annex to the interim constitution outlining the method, said council member Adnan Pachachi.

The agreement on the constitution came on the third night of marathon talks - two days after the deadline agreed to by the council and US officials.

“It was a very emotional moment,” said Salem Chalabi, a representative from the Iraqi National Congress, said. “We established a bill of rights like no other in the region.

“It was quite a remarkable thing” – even more so for being hammered out in the former Military Industry Ministry, a bulwark of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime.

“Compromises were made. Not everybody got what they wanted,” he said. But “everybody was happy”.

The charter has a 13-article bill of rights, including protections for free speech, religious expression, assembly and due process and spells out the shape of an executive branch.

Under the terms of the document, Iraq will have a president with two deputies who would choose a prime minister and cabinet.

Chalabi said decisions by the presidents and deputies would have to be unanimous.

Council members refused to say, however, how the presidency and his deputies would be chosen – and it was not clear whether there had been agreement on that issues.

Shiites have demanded that the president be a Shiite, with Kurd and Sunni vice presidents, but other council members have resisted Shiite attempts to dominate the executive.

The document describes the future Iraq as a federalist state along the lines of Canada, Brazil and India, with considerable authority handed to individual regions – though exactly what authorities is still to be worked out.

Iraqis must now focus on how to establish an interim government to take power on June 30 until new elections.

Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, agreed to accept an unelected government’s taking power on June 30 after the United Nations determined that an early vote was impossible.

The United States, which plans to open its largest embassy in the world on July 1 in Baghdad, will still exert considerable diplomatic influence on the fledgling Iraqi government.

More than 100,000 US troops will remain in Iraq after power is handed over.