Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Iraq

Sunnis shun Iraq charter panel over safety

By wire services
Published July 21, 2005

BAGHDAD - A Sunni Arab faction suspended participation Wednesday in the crafting of Iraq's constitution and a Kurdish bloc asserted claim to hundreds of miles of more territory stretching south of Baghdad. The two moves presented fresh challenges to efforts to draft a document that proponents hope will help bring order to the chaotic country.

The Sunni faction launched its boycott to protest security conditions after gunmen on Tuesday killed one of 15 Sunni members of the constitution-writing committee. Initial reports that two members died in the attack turned out to be wrong.

Committee member Mijbil Issa and committee adviser Dhamin Hussein al-Obeidi were gunned down Tuesday as they left a restaurant in Baghdad's Karradah district. A bodyguard also was killed.

U.S. diplomats were seen entering a meeting late Wednesday with the 12 Sunnis who suspended participation in the committee. There was no immediate word on the outcome of the meeting, which appeared to reflect what the chairman of the constitution committee called the Americans' "big role" in keeping the Sunni minority involved in the process.

Sunnis form the backbone of the insurgency; the interim government views their engagement in the constitution process as key to stabilizing the country.

The committee chairman, Humam Hammoudi, told reporters at a news conference Wednesday that the body remains on target to finish a draft of the constitution by an Aug. 15 deadline. The document then goes to a referendum by mid October.

But he and other committee members made clear that there was no agreement on some major issues, including the decentralized federal structure that some have urged. Some Sunnis fear that structure could split the country into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni enclaves.

WASHINGTON - Morale among U.S. soldiers in Iraq has improved since the start of the war in 2003, and the soldiers' suicide rate dropped by more than half last year, said an Army mental health survey released Wednesday.

The Army's second Mental Health Advisory Team report paints an improving picture of how soldiers are handling their tours and how medical personnel are dealing with mental health problems. The team surveyed more than 2,000 soldiers from last August to October and concluded that aggressive efforts to improve mental health care and to make soldiers aware of the stresses of combat have succeeded.

A majority of soldiers fighting in Iraq, however, reported that morale is still a problem, with 54 percent saying that their unit morale is "low" or "very low," and 9 percent reporting "high" or "very high" morale. During the first survey in late summer 2003, 72 percent of soldiers reported low morale.

WASHINGTON - About half of Iraq's new police units are still training and cannot conduct operations, while the other half of the police units and two-thirds of the new army battalions are only "partially capable" of counterinsurgency missions, and then only with U.S. help, according to a newly declassified Pentagon assessment.

Only "a small number" of Iraqi security forces are capable of fighting the insurgency without U.S. assistance, while about one-third of the army is capable of "planning, executing and sustaining counterinsurgency operations" with allied support, the analysis said.

The assessment, which has not been publicly released, is the most precise analysis of the Iraqis' readiness levels that the military has provided to date.

Bush administration officials have repeatedly said that the 160,000 U.S.-led allied troops cannot begin to withdraw until Iraqi troops are ready to take over security duties. The assessment is described in a brief written response that Gen. Peter Pace, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Pace's statement comes as the Pentagon prepares to deliver to Congress as early as today a report that cites performance standards and goals on a variety of political and economic matters, as well as the training of Iraqi security forces, and a timetable for achieving those goals.

WASHINGTON - Calls for an early withdrawal from Iraq are a mistake that will only embolden terrorists, the House resolved Wednesday. The resolution drew opposition from Democrats, who said it implied that questioning President Bush's Iraq policies is unpatriotic.

The measure, approved 291-137, says the United States should leave Iraq only when national security and foreign policy goals related to a free and stable Iraq have been achieved.

The GOP-controlled House also voted 304-124 to accept another contentious amendment stating that the detention and lawful interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo is essential to the war on terrorism. Some critics of reported prisoner abuse and lack of legal recourse for detainees have called for Guantanamo to be closed.

Information from the Washington Post, Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified July 21, 2005, 00:57:10]