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Iraqis hail signing of historic outline law
Baghdad, Iraq - After weeks of stop-start talks, backroom deals, sleepless nights and hard political bargaining, Iraq's Governing Council finally unveiled its interim constitution yesterday, declaring it to be "a decisive moment in the history of the new Iraq".
But within hours the leading Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a statement which took the gloss from the ceremony and warned that the disagreements which had delayed the signing had not been resolved.
"This [law] places obstacles to arriving at a permanent constitution for the country that preserves its unity and the rights of its people in all their ethnicities and sects," he said.