Deep divides halt key Iraq meeting

It was intended as a baby step into participatory democracy, the country's first foray into nation-building. But Iraq's national conference was postponed Thursday for the second time amid allegations of mismanagement and botched local caucuses.

Fuad Masoum, the official in charge of arranging the conference, announced that it would be delayed for two weeks. Mr. Masoum, who had earlier decided to go ahead with the conference, had faced relentless pressure from Iraqi leaders and the United Nations to postpone it.

"We told him that the caucuses must be nullified, that they would have to do another round, because no one knew about them," said Sheikh Fatih Kashif al-Ghitta, an independent Shiite political leader. "I am in Baghdad, and my neighbors are university professors, and they didn't hear about [the conference.] So what about the people in the provinces?"

The conference, required by law to take place in July, is now scheduled to start in Baghdad on Aug. 15. Its main purpose is to choose a 100-member council that will serve as the de facto parliament until January elections. Modeled after Afghanistan's loya jirga, the three-day conference was meant to draw in indigenous Iraqi leaders not represented in Iraq's new government.

Instead, it had become an exercise in partisan politics. It has deepened already bitter divisions between ethnic and sectarian groups, especially between exiles and homegrown leaders. Many Iraqis claimed that six political parties, most of them made up of returned exiles, dominated the process and alienated exactly the kind of popular leaders the conference was supposed to attract.

"The parties will eat the entire cake," said Mr. Ghitta. "The parties got what they wanted - they got to control the Governing Council and the National Conference, and they're going to control the new parliament."

The renegade Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr decided to boycott, as did the Association for Muslim Scholars, a Sunni group with influence over anti-American insurgents. UN and Iraqi leaders hope the delay will buy them time to convince both groups to participate.

But it's going to be a hard sell to those who view the process as tainted by US-backed parties. "The conference was not elected and it had a lot to do with the US administration," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University who heads an Arab nationalist group that also decided to boycott. "We want to have a national dialogue, but not under an American umbrella."

Many independent Iraqis feared a reprise of last May, when last-minute maneuvering by political parties crushed UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's popular plan for a "caretaker" government of technocrats and shoehorned in a government of party politicians.

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