Some real news.

[necso]

International Herald Tribune

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/07/news/iraq.php

"A Shiite on the panel, Bahaa al-Aaraji, said the 55-member committee's latest proposal was to get 12 to 15 names of Sunni Arabs from Sunni leaders on Thursday and add those informally to the committee, in a nonvoting capacity.

The latest plan harkens back to a proposal put forth last month, but is a step back from a previous proposal, which would have added 25 to 35 Sunnis to a drafting commission, Aaraji said.

When asked why the committee had decreased the proposed number, Aaraji simply said that 'something had changed.'

There is a possibility that the 15-member Kurdish bloc on the committee felt threatened by the potential addition of dozens of Sunnis. There are now two Sunni Arabs on the committee."

Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/158/world/Iraq_s_sectarian_politics_cast:.shtml

"Already, the Shiite majority on Hammoudi's 55-lawmaker committee have balked at Sunni Arab conditions for joining, including demands to admit as many as 25 Sunnis to the panel and give them voting rights equal to those enjoyed by lawmakers.

'We are the ones who have taken part in the electoral process and these are our exclusive rights,' said Bahaa al-Aaraji, a Shiite deputy and the committee's coordinator.

'We already have started to write the constitution and will not wait for the Sunnis to give us their list of nominees,' he said.

With little more than two months left before the deadline, he said 13 would be the ideal number of Sunni Arabs joining the committee. The 13, he explained, would join two Sunni Arab lawmakers on the committee, bringing the total to 15, the same number of Kurdish members. Iraq's Kurds and Sunni Arabs account for a similar share about 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people."

...

The Sunnis (non-Kurdish) are probably (I guess) going to insist on voting rights. (And representation => the Kurdish representation.)

Perhaps if they get these rights, a call would be (widely) accepted for a ceasefire.

It would be a blessing and a mercy to have a ceasefire while the (proposed) Constitution is being written. -- The Constitution is pretty much the ballgame, at least if this particular process is going to work out -- and the threat of a return to (increased) violence is (potentially) a powerful bargaining tool.