Baghdad Conference In Turmoil Over Voting & Najaf
Published Tuesday, August 17th, 2004
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Middle East - 15:13 GMT
Several hundred delegates threatened to walk out of a key Iraq national conference Tuesday, August 17, over voting procedure, as the peace mission in the holy city of Najaf by a conference delegation remained uncertain to be carried out.
An Iraqi representative told reporters that unless the voting procedure for an interim government legislative body is changed, several hundred delegates will walk out.
“The mainstream political parties have dominated the conference and have already drawn up their lists for selecting the national council,” said Aziz Al-Yasseri, from the National Democratic Movement, a broad coalition interest group.
“We refuse this and if this is not dealt with today then the whole conference will fall apart and I will walk out, with hundreds with me,” added the Shiite Muslim from Baghdad, himself nominated for the council.
Nineteen of the 100 seats on the body have already been handed to members of the defunct governing council, which was created by the US-led occupation shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 and included many figures that fought the regime from exile.
According to conference rules, delegates of different leanings - Islamists, secular, Kurdish, Arab or otherwise - are supposed to draw up lists for the remaining 81 seats and submit them to an open vote.
The one gaining a 51-percent majority would be the winning list.
Shaped Before Vote
However, a senior delegate told AFP that most members of Iraq’s national council were chosen long before the scheduled vote Tuesday, putting huge doubts on Washington’s propaganda that the Iraqi conference was a first step towards democracy.
“The makeup and list of people on the national council has largely been decided already,” the senior delegate on the preparatory committee for the three-day conference, which started Sunday, told reporters.
“Leaving it to a truly open vote may bring in people that would threaten the strategic plan that has already been charted for Iraq.”
Another party official asserted the same meaning by saying all lists should more or less conform to previous agreements dating back to 1991 among the country’s then exiled opposition parties, as the various ethnic and religious groups plotted to overthrow Saddam’s regime.
“For example Shiites must get 52 percent of all 100 seats or Islamists get 33 percent and so on and so forth” said Dia Al-Shukurji of the Dawa party, the main grouping of the majority Shiites.
Another official close to the process said the 81 seats would be divided as follows: 21 party members, 21 provincial leaders, 11 minorities, 10 tribal figures, 10 civil society organizations and eight independents.
Women have been already granted 25 percent of all council seats.
Many independents attending the conference have already cried foul and demanded that a direct vote of candidates takes place.
“One of our main disagreements with the preparatory committee is that political parties should not dominate the process and that the average Iraqi must feel that this is truly an opportunity for him or her to enter political life,” said former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr Al-Ulum.
The conference was set to “vote” to choose Iraqi legislature, but 100-members have already long been picked.
Many inside and outside the event charge the process has been hijacked and manipulated from the start, including the selection of delegates in the provinces by big political parties blessed or supported by American occupiers.
Shiite scholar Moqtada Sadr, who commands wide support among poor Shiites in Baghdad and the south, has boycotted the process as his militia battle a US-led assault on Najaf.
The idea of the conference was dreamt up under the previous US-led administration, and enshrined in the country’s interim laws, meant as a blueprint for elections and the drafting of a constitution in 2005.
Najaf Mediation Mission Delayed
Meanwhile, delegates of an Iraqi national conference postponed their mediation mission to Najaf amid new clashes in the embattled city.
At least 50 delegates from the national conference delayed plans to travel to Najaf until Tuesday morning, but voiced confidence they could persuade Sadr to vacate the shrine.
“We are hopeful and optimistic that we would be able to convince Sayed Moqtada and his followers to leave the shrine,” said Fadel Al-Khorsan, an aide to Sheikh Hussein Al-Sadr, a relative of Moqtada.
“We are even ready to escort them to a safe place elsewhere in city and guarantee that no one will harm them in any way,” he added.
Sadr has welcomed the move.
“We can come to an agreement on this through negotiations. We are ready to defend ourselves as we are ready for peace,” said Sadr spokesman, Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani.
On Sunday, a large group of participants walked out of the much-anticipated conference as pitched battles between Mehdi Army and the US occupation troops, backed by Iraqi police, resumed in the holy city.
More than 100 people left their seats as soon as UN special envoy to Iraq Ashraf Jehangir Qazi finished his opening speech, shouting “as long as there are air strikes and shelling we can’t have a conference”.
The new fighting Tuesday came as the military announced three US marines were killed “as a result of enemy action” in the province on Sunday.
Hundreds of demonstrators and tribal chiefs from across Iraq converged on the Imam Ali mausoleum, one of Islam’s holiest sites, to protest at continued fighting between the militia and US-led Iraqi police in Najaf.
Dancing and singing, they brandished pictures of Sadr and denounced Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the US “occupying forces”.
Mortars fell near the police headquarters as the clinic operating in the shrine said eight people were wounded on the second day of isolated clashes since talks broke down between Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and the government on Saturday.
Article courtesy of Islam Online
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