The members of the interim Governing Council (AFP)

BAGHDAD, February 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Marathon talks on Iraq's temporary constitution has failed to produce a deal by the Saturday, February 28, deadline, as the Interim Governing Council appeared unable to mend rifts over Shari’ah (Islamic law), women's rights and federalism with some of the members walked out of the talks.

Council members have given contradictory messages on whether the transitional law will be completed by Saturday, the deadline spelled out in a November agreement clearing the way for sovereignty, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“We have reached no solutions,” said one member of the U.S.-appointed interim Governing Council after talks broke up, AFP said.

Fifteen of the U.S.-appointed 25-member council voted to repeal a proposal to scrap Iraq's 1959 family affairs code and place it under Shari’ah, reported AFP.

“It contains articles that suppress social development and the progress of women,” a woman member, who requested anonymity told AFP.

Nasir Chaderchi, a Sunni Muslim member, said the vote marked the first major row in the council, which was established by the U.S.-led occupation in July.

Chaderchi said three or four members left the room as a result of the dispute, while another member had earlier put the number at eight.

The 1959 personal status law grants same rights to husband and wife to divorce and inheritance.

One of the key dividing issues is also how much political power should be given to women, who make up more than half of the population.

Iraqi women are demanding a 40 percent voice on the transitional government.

Although the constitution is expected to enshrine a bill of rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and civilian control of the military, the council's Shiites and Sunnis are pitted against the council's secular elements.

“The Islamists want Islam to be the main source for the legal text and we want it to be a main source,” said Mahmmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the council.

Sadr Warns Anew

“I will follow this path even at the risk of being killed or arrested,” Sadr vowed

In southern city of Kufa, Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr renewed threats to spark resistance operations if Iraq's U.S. overseer Paul Bremer continues to oppose making Islam the basis of the law.

“I call on all believers to remain prepared, while awaiting orders from the Hawza (Shiite religious authority), to confront the occupation,” Moqtada Sadr, a young anti-occupation firebrand cleric, said at Friday prayers.

“I will follow this path even at the risk of being killed or arrested,” he vowed.

Speaking in Baghdad on February 19, Bremer threatened to use his veto should the Governing Council draft a temporary constitution based on Shari’ah.

Hundreds of Iraqis took to the streets of the Shiite holy city of An-Najaf last October in support for a shadow cabinet formed by Sadr.

In July, thousands of Iraqis demonstrated against the U.S.-sanctioned council, signaling mounting frustration over the U.S. military's hollow promises to spread democracy and restore situation back to normal.

Kurdish Dilemma

Two young Turkmans take part in the hunger strike

The interim council was also still thrashing out the contentious matter of the shape and dynamics of a federal Iraq.

Although the council agreed that the country's Kurdish minority would continue to enjoy virtual autonomy in the three northern provinces that it has controlled since 1991, Othman said the talks were now centered on the status of Kurdish militias and northern oil revenues.

The Kurds have resisted pressure to allow new Iraqi security forces to replace their peshmerga militias in the north as they fear a replay of the past under ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, now in U.S. captivity. 

But as the clock ticks, the parties find themselves reopening issues already pronounced settled.

While Othman and others, including Sunni council member Adnan Pachachi, said the Iraqi body had agreed to recognize Kurdish as an official language, some have protested.

“The Kurds want their language to be an official language, but the Arabs think this language ... cannot be imposed on whole country,” said Adnan Assadi of the Shiite Islamist Dawa party.

Arab and Turkomans, Sunnis or Shiites, in the north also oppose a federal Iraq.

Both took to the streets last month to protest Kurdish bids to dominate the ethnically-split oil hub of Kirkuk.

Hunger Strike

Adding to the tension as the deadline approaches, some 100 ethnic Turkomans, including intellectuals, students and women, began a hunger strike in Baghdad to draw attention to their political rights.

The Turkomans, who claim they make up about 13 percent of Iraq's population, want their rights enshrined in the new law but fear they will be marginalized.

“Today a pen and a strike, tomorrow a Kalashnikov to kill those who would deny us our rights,” said a banner strung up in front of a makeshift camp.

The council was also split on the structure and the mechanism for selecting the provisional government that will rule after June 30, as well as the final shape the government will take after elections are finally held either later this year or in early 2005.

Bremer said last week that elections would be impossible to be held for at least one year.

The leading Shiite authority in Iraq Ayatollah Ali Sistani demanded Thursday, February 26, that the United Nations Security Council pass a resolution setting a date for general elections by the end of the year.

The statement was viewed as an informal endorsement of the findings of a U.N. fact-finding mission on the feasibility of elections that Sistani himself had requested.