Constitution to be sent to printers

Iraq’s constitution will be sent to the government printing house tomorrow, according to Baha al-Araji, deputy head of the Constitution Committee.

He claimed it stood unchanged from the version sent to parliament by the drafting committee on August 28, after several deadlines were missed.

“The draft is unchanged from the one presented to the National Assembly. We will hand these five million copies to the Trade Ministry to be distributed in the monthly food ration allocations.”

Iraqis will vote on the charter in an October 15 referendum, with the outcome still not assured because of fundamental opposition from the country’s Sunni minority, which governed under Saddam.

Despite the Sunnis’ minority status in Iraq, the vast majority of Arab Muslims are members of that sect.

President Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, said the version to be printed did contain one revision, a bow to an Arab League demand that the constitution acknowledge the country’s role as a founder of the pan-Arab group.