BAGHDAD, July 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Iraq’s Sunni Arabs have decided to rejoin a panel drafting the country’s constitution Tuesday, July 26, after ending a boycott called in protest at the killing of three fellow Sunnis last week.

A Baghdad newspaper, meanwhile, published an early draft of the charter suggesting Islam will be “the official” source of the country’s Statute Book.

The official end to the boycott is expected to be announced later Tuesday at a meeting of Sunni factions, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“We will definitely return tomorrow (Tuesday),” said Saleh Mutlaq, spokesman for the Sunni umbrella group Iraqi National Dialogue, after a meeting Monday, July 25, with Iraqi government officials.

Abdul Nasser Al-Jenabi, a Sunni committee member, also said Sunni demands had been met. The speaker of parliament announced the compromise in a signed statement.

Demands included allowing Sunnis to monitor a judicial investigation into the murders -- in an effort to get them back on board ahead of an August 1 deadline for the committee to hand over the draft to parliament.

The Sunni members suspended participation in the constitution-drafting Wednesday, July 20, after a Sunni Arab committee member and two fellow-members of the Sunni Arab umbrella group Iraqi National Dialogue were shot dead.

The boycott had threatened to derail the constitutional talks and undermine their credibility with Iraq's Sunnis, who are also under-represented in parliament as many of them boycotted the January elections for being held under the US-led occupation and an unstable atmosphere.

Fifteen Sunni members were drafted on to the committee last month, joining members drawn from a parliament mainly made up of Shiites and Kurds.

The Iraqi parliament is due to vote on a draft constitution by August 15, before it is put to a national referendum in October as the country spirals deeper by the day into violence and lawlessness.

Iraqi Sunnis have been complaining about being discriminated against and harshly oppressed under the government of Ibrahim Al-Jaafari.

In May, Iraqi Sunni leaders demanded Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh be sacked for the alleged involvement of his services in anti-Sunni killings.

The string of anti-Sunni attacks prompted Sunni leaders to declare on May 20 an unprecedented three-day closure of Baghdad’s mosques in protest.

The government mouthpiece, Al-Sabah, published what it described as an early draft of the proposed constitution which specifies that: “Islam is the official religion of the State” and “the main source of legislation.”

“No law that contradicts the universally agreed tenets of Islam may be enacted,” said the draft text, which is still under discussion, reported AFP.

Under the current transitional legislation, put in place by US forces in March 2004, Islam was to be considered only “a source of legislation,” and laws could not contradict “the principles of democracy” and civil rights.

But there was no reference in the new draft, according to the paper, to having to take account of democracy or civil rights.

The present draft specifies that while “Islam defines the identity of the Iraqi people ... other religions must be respected.”

“The Iraqi state belongs to two worlds -- Arab and Muslim,” the draft also says, to take account of the Kurdish minority.

It further says that Arabic is to be the country's official language, while Kurdish and Arabic will be the official languages spoken in the Kurdish north of the country and the two official languages used by the federal administration.