After weeks of factional haggling that have prompted warnings of increasing civil distress, several leading Iraqi politicians have begun saying that flawed measures in the interim constitution are partly to blame for the failure to form a new government.
The document, which Iraqi officials co-wrote with the Americans, was approved in March 2004 and is the most enduring legacy of the formal American occupation. The document, called the transitional administrative law and commonly known as the TAL, sets the timetable for elections and the rules for installing a government, and it tries to address difficult issues, like the question of property restoration for Kurds exiled from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Senior politicians, particularly Shiite Arabs, are now attacking the TAL for enshrining a process that they see as contributing to the deadlock. They are especially critical of the measure that requires a two-thirds vote by the national assembly to appoint a president, and they point out that the law fails to set a deadline for the appointment.
"This is really sort of a weakness in the TAL," said Adnan Ali, a deputy head of the Dawa Islamic Party, a powerful Shiite party whose leader, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is the top candidate for prime minister. "It's an obstruction rather than an assurance. This should have been done differently.".........
http://nytimes.com/2005/04/03/international/03baghdad.html?hp&ex=1112504400&en=e4a309e12ef8deb7&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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