I haven’t been smoking crack or drinking, and I haven’t fallen and hit my head, but for some reason or another I have now read this story three times and I can’t figure what the hell to make of it:
National Assembly today called off a meeting that was scheduled to decide on the draft constitution, the Speaker’s office said, and no new date for the meeting was immediately announced.
A vote on the document was originally deferred Monday by the Speaker, Hajim al-Hassani, who said three days of talks would be held to try to win over Sunni Arab negotiators.
It appears, however, that no agreement has been reached so far with the Sunnis on the question of federalism, which would essentially set up powerful local regions instead of a strong central government.
The question facing the Iraqi leaders and the Americans who are advising them is whether to move on without the Sunnis and just vote to approve the charter, on which the Kurds and Shiites have already agreed. But the danger is that such a move could lead to a Sunni walkout, and a possible increase in the Sunni-led insurgency, so it appears that they have decided to take more time to try to get the Sunnis on board.
An optimistic tone was struck by President Jalal Talabani, however, soon after the delay was announced.
“Efforts are still continuing to reach consensus in the coming hours,” he said at a joint news conference with a Sunni leader, and he stressed that the Sunnis should get a bigger role in drafting the constitution.
The announcement that Parliament would miss the second extended deadline places the current government on uncertain legal authority. Under the rules that were agreed to last year the National Assembly is obliged to dissolve itself and hold new elections if it is unable to reach agreement on the interim constitution.
So they don’t have an agreement, they aren’t meeting, yet they are just pretending everything is fine and they don’t need to dissolve? Am I missing something?
Apparently not.
Then there is this:
Fighters believed to be members of Saddam Hussein’s former regime killed 13 Iraqi police, 27 civilians and an American security-force member in a concerted attack in a west Baghdad neighborhood, first luring police within range by slaughtering five members of an Iraqi household, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Thursday.
The Baghdad attack, in which witnesses said up to 40 masked insurgents armed with grenade-launchers and AK-47 assault rifles openly walked the streets, came late Wednesday, as political violence and sectarian tensions flared across Iraq on the eve of a decision on Iraq’s new constitution.
Two days of sudden clashes between government-allied Shiite fighters and a rival Shiite militia subsided in the south of Iraq by midday Thursday, after appeals for calm by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and militant Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.