IRAQ: Iraqi politicians have overcome a significant impasse in their efforts to write a new national constitution.
But this week's breakthrough did not solve the dispute over the ethnically diverse city of Kirkuk or the role of Islam in Iraqi law. It was about which Sunni Arabs get to serve on the committee drafting the charter.
Six weeks before the August 15th due date for a draft of the constitution, Iraqi politicians have yet to resolve any issues crucial for the country's future, Iraqi and US officials acknowledge.
"What is written so far is very simple, and we still have a long way to go," said Salah Mutlak, one of the 15 Sunni Arab members of the constitutional committee added on Monday as part of a deal to draw Sunnis into the political process.
"Federalism, the shape of the country, relations with other Arab nations and Islam are still pending until now."
Iraq has been operating under the legal cover of a UN-approved transitional administrative law, called the TAL, since last March.
National elections on January 30th paved the way for the drafting of the constitution, which under the current schedule must be submitted for approval to the 275-member transitional national assembly on August 15th.
There will then be a nationwide referendum October 15th, followed by elections for a permanent government by the end of the year.
From the outset, the process has been hampered by delays, including a three-month wait before the naming of a transitional government.
The 71-member constitutional committee includes 55 elected members of the national assembly as well as 15 unelected Sunni Arabs and a member of Iraq's tiny Sabih sect added this week in what passed for a milestone in the glacial constitutional process.
Committee members have insisted in newspaper reports that they had already drawn up 80 per cent of the constitution by the beginning of this week. But officials said the committee only got around to dividing itself into six subcommittees two weeks ago.
Officials said on Wednesday that 50 per cent or less was a more accurate assessment of the drafting done so far.
"We cannot say that we have done a great amount," said Abbas Bayati, one of 28 members of the committee's dominant Shia Muslim bloc.
As the committee's Sunni members began poring over the work of the subcommittees which has been completed so far, they expressed surprise that it amounted to little more than notes on issues such as civil rights or the relative power of provinces and the capital.
In what could further slow progress, new committee members will have a chance to review, reject and revise the material that has already been written.
The constitution must also be approved unanimously by committee members, forcing them to overcome Iraq's fractured political, ethnic and sectarian topography.
"There is an insistence on consensus," said Sheik Abdul Rahman Naimi, a tribal leader and assembly member who serves on the committee as leader of a four-person independent bloc.
Already disputes are evident. Sunnis complain the Kurds want too much autonomy. Muslims warn they will reject any constitution relying too heavily on the TAL.
And Kurds say that they will reject any constitution that draws too heavily from Islamic law.