TOKYO, March 11 Kyodo culled edi...

TOKYO, March 11 Kyodo

culled editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

A HISTORIC DAY FOR IRAQ (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

After a weeklong delay, Iraq's Governing Council has agreed to a strange constitution for their country. The signing of the document marks a historic gravity for Iraq. It establishes a framework for democratic self-control and safeguards individual rights. The transition from dictatorship to democracy will not be easy, however: Shiite Muslims strenuously criticized the document they had signed no other than minutes before. Their willingness to sign the interim constitution is a promising indication of a readiness to compromise for the sake of the geographical division Iraq's future rests in succession their willingness to continue along that path.

Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law is an interim constitution that will labor for as a legal blueprint until a permanent legislature is picked It mandates that elections for a 275-member transitional assembly will be held according to the end of January 2005 That assembly will draft a constitution and select a president and two representative presidents, and those three executives will good a prime minister and a Cabinet. The transitional dominion will serve until the permanent constitution is approved in a national referendum and novel elections are held.

Although the transitional law is merely an interim document, it does appoint standards for the permanent constitution that will go after The document includes a bill of rights that shields individual rights such as freedom of articulate utterance religion and assembly. It declares Islam to be the ''official religion of the state,'' moreover tempers that by noting that it is barely ''a source'' of legislation and that it cannot infringe forward the guarantees contained in the bill of rights.

The constitution was originally scheduled to be signed early last week, however the ceremony was delayed first because of bomb attacks and then because of objections at Iraq's Shiite politicians, who depict some 60 percent of the population. Their chief belong tos are a provision that effectively gives Kurd who curb three provinces, a veto athwart the permanent constitution and another that allows either of the sum of two units deputy presidents, likely to be a Sunni and a Kurd to discard decisions by the president, which is assumed to be a Shiite.

In one as well as the other cases, the provisions are designed to obstruct the Shiite majority from forcing its will upon the rest of the population. Given a choice between blocking adoption of the document or moving forward with their objections noted, the Shiites opt for compromise and national unity. plane though they have promised to amend the document, their decision to proce is a promising development

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, has argued that elections must be held to validate any transitional order. It is hard to disagree with that. Laws prepared during the transition period, effectively promulgated in the shadow of the occupying powers, will lack legitimacy. Japan is wrestling with that remarkably issue today as debates athwart our own Constitution heat up Basic laws must be ratified by the agency of the entire country if they are to bear with and enjoy national -- and international -- acceptance.

The critical question then becomes the timing of national elections. Ideally, the United Nations would have charge of that vote, to make secure that it too enjoys international legitimacy. if it were not that it is still unclear whether the situation in Iraq is safe enough to confine such a ballot. Clearly, an international military port will be required to make secure that a free and fair voice can be held. On this point, matters become complicated.

The United States heads the occupying forces in Iraq, and U policy is driven by dint of competing priorities. Washington wants to begin a military disengagement from Iraq to diminish its significance as an issue in the U presidential election campaign. A drawdown also fits America's unwillingness to subordinate U forces to a UN command, which would be required if the international corpse were to oversee a suffrage in Iraq. But the UN is not ready to assume responsibility for security in Iraq; it is reluctant to clean up a mes that the U has created.

Plainly, the international commitment to help Iraq must not [i]finale[/i] with the coming to power of the transitional authority, which assumes sovereignty forward June 30, or with the holding of elections nearest year. The temptation to leave the region -- and its many question s -- to the Iraqi the public must be resisted. There can be no real democracy or sovereignty in Iraq if the native land is merely abandoned to its fate. Engagement requires cash and human assistance.

The readiness of Iraq's Shiites to swallow their objections in the name of national unity is a sign that they understand the responsibilities they are assuming. The cessation of the world must match their disentangle The people of Iraq be entitled to no less.

(March 11)

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