Iraqis fail to solve constitution woes

Iraqis tasked with drafting the new constitution failed to make progress in resolving issues holding up the completion of the charter as rebel attacks left at least 26 dead. The constitution committee tried to solve some of the issues as parliamentarians vowed that the draft charter will be ready by August 15, on time for a scheduled mid-October referendum.

"We continued to discuss Tuesday some of the articles of the first chapter of the draft constitution that talks of basic principles on which state of Iraq will be based," Munther al-Fadhal, a panelist said after the meeting.

Unresolved issues like the role of Islam, whether Kurdish should be an official language nationwide alongside Arabic, and how to usher federalism were discussed.

"Finally we decided to forward these issues to political leaders of Iraq like President Jalal Talabani, former premier Ayad Allawi and a few others," Fadhal said.

"They will give their opinion next week which will be incorporated in the draft." He said the panel take up the issue of citizenship today.

U.S. officials have pressured Iraqi leaders to complete the document on time amid fears a delay could undermine public confidence in the political process and play into the hands of insurgents.

There is also disagreement on how government revenues, particularly the oil receipts that make up the lion's share, should be shared between the federal government and the regions.

As the haggling continued behind closed doors, MPs blasted Kuwait in a live television broadcast, accusing their neighbor of stealing their oil as well as chipping away some of their national territory.

The allegations were similar to those used by Saddam Hussein to justify his August 2, 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

This time, both sides want to resolve the dispute peacefully.

The latest comments were made a day before an Iraqi delegation was scheduled to head to Kuwait to discuss the situation.

"There have been violations such as digging horizontal oil wells to pump Iraq oil," legislator Jawad al-Maliki, chairman of the Parliament's Security and Defense Committee, told the National Assembly. "There have also been violations by taking Iraqi territories as deep as one kilometer."

On Saturday, a Kuwaiti official said a number of Iraqi homes and farms have slightly "encroached" into Kuwait at the border area of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq.

Some farms that belonged to Iraqis were razed when the United Nations redrew the border in 1993, two years after a U.S.-led international coalition fought the Gulf War that ended a seven-month Iraqi occupation of this country. The Iraqi owners were compensated.

Legislator Hassan al-Sunneid said a four-member delegation, comprising three legislators and deputy foreign minister, Mohammad Haji Hmoud, will head to Kuwait today and to try to find a solution.

Hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated at the frontier last week to stop Kuwait from building a metal barrier between the two countries. Shots were fired across the border into Kuwait, but no one was wounded and Kuwaiti border guards did not return fire.

Kuwait insists that the pipeline barrier, meant to stop vehicles from illegally crossing through the desert, is on its side of the frontier.

The UN demarcation also gave Kuwait 11 oil wells and an old naval base that used to be in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a powerful blast shook central Baghdad when a suicide car bomber blew himself up close to a U.S. military convoy, killing four people and wounding 23 others, including four women, medics said.

A U.S. military statement said that six marines died Monday in action near Haditha, 250 kilometers west of Baghdad, while another was killed when hit by a suicide car bomber near the town of Hit, 170 kilometers west of Baghdad.

Gunmen opened fire on a group of people leaving a city hospital where they had been to see the body of a Sunni cleric, murdered late Monday.

Five people were killed in the attack.

Iraqi police Colonel Mizher Hamad Yussef died in a drive-by shooting, and two employees of the Finance Ministry were shot dead on their way to work in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.

In further scattered incidents across the country, 12 Iraqis were killed by insurgent bombs, four of which were soldiers. - AFP, AP

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