Charles Recknagel is standards editor for RFE/RL.
Sa'd Jawal Qandil, a member of the constitution-drafting committee Iraqi leaders have given themselves three more days to resolve the sticking points that are preventing approval of the country’s draft constitution. The toughest of the remaining disputes -- the debate over federalism -- largely pits the Shi’a against the Sunni and is becoming increasingly tense. What are the prospects for finding a compromise?
Some fear Iraqi women would lose out if religious law is employed Iraq is once again counting down to a midnight deadline for completing the draft of its first post-Saddam Hussein constitution. The countdown comes just a week after the committee drafting the constitution failed to meet its original deadline of 15 August and was given until 22 August --> http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/8/A4ECE30E-B44D-4563-B1A4-6A2F8C3E30A3.html to finish the work. The question now is whether the committee has been able to solve key disputes -- including the role of Islam and federalism -- that have divided the members along political and communal lines.
SCIRI head Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim (file photo) In Baghdad, a constitutional drafting committee continues to struggle to define what kind of state Iraqis want to live in. Iraq's Shi'a religious parties, which dominate the interim government, have seized the chance to press hard for their vision of a state with strong Islamic colorings. Now, one of the two largest parties has increased the stakes further by calling for a Shi'a autonomous region in southern Iraq and a special status for the Shi'a holy cities of Al-Najaf and Karbala.
Prime Minister al-Ja'fari thinks next week will be enough for a consensus to be found (file photo) Iraq's National Assembly has voted to extend the deadline for drafting the country's first post-Saddam Hussein constitution until 22 August. The extra days are intended to give time to the drafting committee to resolve several problems that so far have proven intractable. But as RFE/RL reports, the heated bargaining in the run-up to the original deadline of 15 August appears to have only added new difficulties to the process.
Kurdish calls for autonomy increased as the constitution deadline approached Iraq’s constitutional committee faces a deadline today for completing the draft of the country’s first post-Saddam Hussein charter and submitting it to the National Assembly for approval. But while U.S. and Iraqi officials are expressing optimism that the document will be ready on time, there is no certainty that remaining disputes will not force a delay.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says coalition forces have unambiguous evidence that weapons and bombs are being sent across the border from Iran into Iraq. He stopped short of saying whether the Iranian government is directly involved in the arms transfers, which Washington says add to the instability in Iraq. The charges come despite recent progress by Iran and the Shi'a-led Iraqi government to forge closer ties, including Iranian aid for building a new airport and an offer to help train Iraqi troops.
Members of Iraq's constitution-drafting committee (file photo) Efforts to draft a new Iraqi constitution are in trouble. The committee drafting the document is supposed to have it ready for Iraq’s provisional parliament -- the National Assembly -- to approve by Monday (15 August). The constitutional committee has completed much of the new constitution, but some of the most difficult points remain unresolved. They include to what extent Iraq will be a federal state and how much Iraq’s legal code should be based on Islamic law.
Magdi el-Nashar was arrested in Egypt The focus of the investigation into the 7 July London bombings has focused increasingly on the search for who masterminded the operation and who made the explosives used by the suicide attackers. Police appealed to the public for any information that might help them track the movements of the bombers and identify their accomplices. Meanwhile, the death toll from the attacks now stands at 54, as another one of those seriously wounded in the bombings has died.
The International Olympic Committee, meeting in Singapore, has chosen London as the venue of the 2012 Olympic Games. London won in a contest against four other strong candidates: Paris, Madrid, New York, and Moscow. All of the rivals mounted sizeable publicity efforts in an effort to host the event.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev (R) with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao 5 July 2005 -- The leaders of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan met today in Astana for a summit of their regional security group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The nuclear-power plant at Bushehr, Iran (file photo) Prague, 26 June 2005 (RFE/RL) -- One of the biggest questions surrounding Iran's 24 June election of a new, ultraconservative president is how that might affect international negotiations over Iran's nuclear activities. In his first press conference as president-elect on 26 June, Mahmud Ahmadinejad spoke of the negotiations only in general terms and showed no difference from Tehran's existing position.
Iran's new president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, is 48 years old and a generation younger than his defeated presidential rival Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, age 70. As RFE/RL reports, that makes Ahmadinejad's victory in some respects a "changing of the guard" in Iran between two generations of Islamic revolutionaries.
A bloc of Arab Sunni parties has reached a deal with leaders of Iraq's Constitutional Committee regarding how many Sunni Arab representatives will participate in drafting the country's new constitution. The agreement comes after weeks of dispute, and now clears the way for writing a document intended to represent the interests of all of Iraq's communities.
Frontrunner Rafsanjani has hinted at opening negotiations with the U.S. The run-up to Iran's presidential election on 17 June is being closely watched in Western capitals. It could augur for some changes in Iranian foreign policy over the next four-year presidential term. But, at the same time, any of the candidates who wins office would have to work within the tight constraints imposed by Iran's conservative establishment.
Global military spending in 2004 exceeded the equivalent of $1 trillion, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in Sweden. The spending came as the world saw 19 armed conflicts, each with more than 1,000 battle deaths.
Prague, 6 June 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Signs are mounting that Saddam Hussein could be put on trial within the next two months. A top aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja'fari says that Saddam could face 12 charges, including alleged crimes committed in Iraqi Kurdistan, where tens of thousands of people died as part of a government crackdown in the late 1980s.
EU headquarters in Brussels The resounding Dutch 'no' to the EU constitution (1 June), close on the heels of French rejection (29 May), poses a challenge to not only the European Union. It also presents the governments of some would-be member states with problems. Can countries like Croatia, Turkey, and Ukraine still convince their publics and opposition groups to back EU reforms in hopes of eventually joining the bloc? Or will new doubts about Brussels' ability to realize its goals begin to undermine the transition process of potential future member states?
Egyptians vote today on whether to change the constitution to allow future presidents to be directly elected in a contest with several candidates, rather than being nominated by parliament. Washington and Cairo are hailing the referendum as a step toward democracy in Egypt and the Middle East. But Egyptian opposition parties are calling the exercise a farce. They say the government has set such tight conditions on who could compete in the multi-candidate polls that the ruling party is guaranteed to stay in power.
Some 500 Uzbek refugees who have fled Andijon are gathered in a camp on the Kyrgyz side of the Karadariya River. RFE/RL talked today to Bob Deen, the representative in Osh for ACTED, a Paris-based NGO, about conditions in the camp. [For more on these events, see RFE/RL's dedicated webpage: Unrest in Uzbekistan --> /specials/uzbek_unrest/ ]
Almost as soon as violence broke out in Uzbekistan last week, regional government leaders blamed the unrest on Islamists seeking to subvert the rule of law. The immediate attribution of blame from Tashkent, Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Moscow placed the events squarely in the framework of the global war on terrorism. But the swiftness with which blame was assigned also fits another pattern -- an almost reflexive tendency to pin all domestic unrest in the authoritarian Central Asian republics, not on economic or political conditions, but on renegade groups. [For more on these events, see RFE/RL's dedicated webpage: Unrest in Uzbekistan --> /specials/uzbek_unrest/ ]
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