US concedes ground to Islamists on Iraqi law

Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators said there was accord on a wider role for Islam than Iraq had seen before.

But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam ‘‘the’’, not ‘‘a’’, main source of law—changing current wording—and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.

‘‘It’s shocking,’’ he said. ‘‘It doesn’t fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state.’’

US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been guiding intensive meetings since Parliament gave constitution drafters a week’s extension to resolve crucial differences over regional autonomy and division of oil revenues.

An official of one of the interim government’s main Shi’ite Islamist parties confirmed the deal on law and Islam. It was unclear what concessions the Shi’ites may have made on the draft constitution, but it seemed possible their demands for Shi’ite autonomy in the oil-rich south, pressed this month by Islamist leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, may be watered down in the face of Sunni opposition.

Sunni Arab negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak also said a deal was struck which would mean Parliament could pass no legislation that ‘‘contradicted Islamic principles’’.

However, he was careful to underline the continuing Sunni opposition to Hakim’s demands, saying, ‘‘We reject federalism.” Hundreds demonstrated in the Sunni city of Ramadi on Saturday, echoing Mutlak’s views.

The Kurdish negotiator rushed to make clear his outrage at a deal on Islam: ‘‘We don’t want dictatorship of any kind, including any religious dictatorship.

‘‘Perhaps the Americans are negotiating to get a deal at any cost, but we will not accept a constitution at any cost,’’ he said, adding that he believed Shi’ite leaders had used the precedent of Afghanistan to win the ambassador’s support.

Khalilzad, who has said there will be ‘‘no compromise’’ on equal rights for women and minorities, helped draft a constitution in his native Afghanistan that declared it an ‘‘Islamic Republic’’ in which no law could contradict Islam. It also, however, contained language establishing equal rights for women and protecting religious minorities.

About a dozen senior leaders, representing the Shi’ite Islamist-led government, secular Shi’ite former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Kurds and Sunnis, were in talks on Saturday.

Sunni leaders say they are resigned to the Kurds maintaining their current autonomy in the north—though not to the Kurds extending their territory into the northern oilfields—but said they would not tolerate an autonomous Shi’ite region.

Ethnic tensions in the northern oil city of Kirkuk spilled on to the streets on Saturday as hundreds of Arabs demonstrated against federalism—code for Kurdish ambitions to annex Kirkuk—and gunmen shot up the office of a Kurdish political party for the second time in a month, wounding three guards. —Reuters