Iraq parliament reverses vote rule change
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-05 20:14

Iraq's National Assembly voted on Wednesday to reverse last-minute changes it had made to rules for next week's referendum on a new constitution following criticism by the United Nations and a boycott threat by the Sunni minority.

After a brief debate and with only about half of its 275 members present, the assembly voted 119-28 to restore the original voting rules for the referendum, which will take place Oct. 15. Washington hopes a "yes" vote in the referendum will unite Iraq's disparate factions and erode support for the country's bloody insurgency.

U.S. and U.N. officials hope that restoring the original rules will avert a boycott of the referendum by the Sunni minority, action that would have deeply undermined the credibility of the vote and set back efforts to bring Sunnis into the political process.

"The government is completely keen to make the constitutional process legitimate and of high credibility and we are concerned about the success of this process rather than the results of the referendum," government spokesman Laith Kubba said after the vote.

Many Sunnis oppose the charter and want it rewritten, believing it would divide Iraq and leave Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north with virtual autonomy and control over the country's oil wealth.

The original rules, now restored, mean that Sunnis can veto the constitution by getting a two-thirds "no" vote in three provinces, even if the charter wins majority approval nationwide. Sunni Arabs are dominant in four of the 18 provinces.

On Sunday, Iraq's Shiite- and Kurdish-controlled parliament effectively closed that loophole with their rule change. The legislature decided that a simple majority of those who cast votes means the constitution's victory — but that two-thirds of registered voters must cast "no" ballots in three provinces to defeat it.

That interpretation had raised the bar to a level almost impossible to meet. In a province of 1 million registered voters, for example, 660,000 would have had to vote "no" — even if that many didn't even come to the polls.

After Wednesday's vote, the deputy speaker, Hussein al-Shahristani, said the parliament now agreed that the word "voter" throughout the election rules means someone "who did really cast his vote in the referendum" — both for the purposes of passing the referendum or for getting the two-thirds threshold needed to defeat.

In behind-the-scenes negotiations Tuesday, U.N. and U.S. officials pressed Iraqi legislators and government officials to reverse that change.

The U.N. said the change was a violation of international standards.

"Ultimately, this will be a sovereign decision by the Iraqis, and it's up to the Iraqi National Assembly to decide on the appropriate electoral framework," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York on Tuesday. "That being said, it is our duty in our role in Iraq to point out when the process does not meet international standards."

The Americans were talking separately with the Shiite-led government.

On Monday, U.N. officials began distributing 5 million copies of the constitution to voters across Iraq. The world body also will monitor the voting on Oct. 15.