Iraqi Parliament signed off the much-awaited draft constitution on Sunday, paving the way for the charter to be put to a referendum on October 15. Meanwhile 23 people, including a Kurdish lawmaker were killed in the unabated violence across the country.
"We are handing the draft over to the UN," deputy parliamentary speaker Hussein Sharistani said after reading out five constitution articles amended following talks between dominant Shiites and Kurds and minority Sunni Arabs.
The amendments to the text, adopted by parliament in late August, were agreed to following informal talks in an attempt to bring on board the disenchanted Sunni Arab minority which had objected to several key provisions.
One article was amended to say that Iraq "is a founding and effective member of the Arab League" aimed at soothing Sunni Arab who had called for the country’s identity to be identified as ‘Arab’, something the Kurds had in turn objected to.
A new article was added to create two deputy premier posts, while another amendment stipulated that the federal government would ensure an equitable distribution of water resources between the regions. The draft will now be sent to the UN representatives tasked with printing five million copies - in Arabic and Kurdish - for distribution to the public ahead of the referendum.
Earlier, insurgents assassinated a Kurdish member of parliament and wounded the other while police found 24 bodies shot to death and dumped in the Tigris River.
Faris Nasir Hussein, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, was killed along with his brother and their driver in an ambush 80 kilometres north of Baghdad. A second Kurdish lawmaker, Haidar Shanoun, was wounded in the attack near the town of Dujail.
Police and PUK officials said the men were murdered on Saturday night as they drove to the capital for Sunday’s session of the legislature which signed off on minor amendments to the country’s draft constitution.
Authorities reported finding two dozen more bodies on Sunday, men shot to death in the apparent ongoing tit-for-tat killings between Sunni and Shia death squads. Four of the dead were found handcuffed and shot in east Baghdad. Twenty more were dragged from the Tigris River near Balad, police reported.
The US military said a soldier was killed in a roadside bombing while on patrol near Al Asad airbase in a violent insurgent-infested region near the Syrian border.
In the troubled and ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb killed five Iraqi soldiers and wounded two others, police said. Meanwhile, a suicide bomber, who was captured before he could blow himself up in a Shiite mosque last week, claimed that he was kidnapped, beaten and drugged by insurgents who forced him take on the mission.
The US military on Sunday said its medical tests indicated the young man was telling the truth.
In a confession broadcast on state television on Friday, Mohammed Ali, who claimed to be Saudi-born and appeared to be in his 20s, declared he was kidnapped and coerced to agree to the mission. |
