Sunnis

Sunnis refuse to back draft constitution:

"At stake in the talks is the definition of Iraq: whether it is an amalgam of identities and regions, or a well defined state with a strong central government."

Well, they need to keep talking and all the reported talk I heard today from the various voices sounded remarkably like political debate! I guess they need to decide whether they want to separate religious and state powers and that has been a long debated issue of most democracies. Then they might want to consider separating judicial and state powers and that too has been long debated in democracies. The fear of this constitution being rejected is the country plunging into civil war. Look back over other consitutions being written. The prices of agreement caused blood pressure to run high and voices to speak loudly. People are talking about things which they hold so true to themselves. It may be a silly question, but have the Iraqis had access to constitutions from other nations? Have they had representatives from other nations talking to them about how they solved some of the issues? We cannot expect them to uphold a western democracy when there is no one in the country who can know what that means. You can't put a middle eastern head on a westerner and vice versa ...which is why we need to let them sort it out in their own way. It's true, a civil war would just destabilise the whole region. There would be so much anger...as there has been in any other civil war which would spill over. The Iraqis have come so far in such hideous circumstances and are probably faring a lot better than we have done in our history. Their resilience is remarkable. Initially it will be an amalgam. It takes a while for different people to work and live along side each other. There is still a division between Scotland and England but there is a working relationship which was hard won. They just need to keep talking and probably working on something as a team so they have some sense of achievement. All talk and no work makes people fidgety.