IRAQ - Focusing On The Non-Oil Sector - Part 6-O - The Arab Question.

The question whether or not Iraq was an Arab country was one of the most divisive issues in the process of drafting a permanent constitution. Since it was the Kurds who caused this issue, the Sunni Arabs of Iraq appealed to them for a solution. The Kurdish coalition leaders, Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and is president of Kurdistan, and Jalal Talabani, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and is the current president of the Iraqi republic, agreed for Iraq to be defined as an Arab state and a founding member of the Arab League.

This was to be in the draft of the constitution - to replace a definition, imposed by the two Kurdish leaders, which had said Iraq was part of the Muslim world but its Arab people were part of the Arab nation. That definition was the subject of prompt attack by the Arab League's Secretary-General, Amr Moussa, in response to appeals by Iraq's Sunni Arab minority leaders. The latter had also appealed to Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as the United Nations.

Ending a day's meeting in Cairo, the Arab Foreign Ministers on Sept. 8 stressed Iraq's Arab identity and unity and agreed to open an office for the Arab League in Baghdad after President Talibani hit them for their failure to send ambassadors to his country. In the final statement, the ministers welcomed the announcement made by Moussa to open the Baghdad mission and called on him to complete this as soon as possible. Before the meeting, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said the ministers were to discuss the issue of raising diplomatic representation of the Arab states in Iraq. The statement urged governmental and NGOs and funds to contribute to Iraq's rebuilding and cancelling its debts so as to enable its economy to rise up. Iraqi officials at the meeting said they inherited a debt of $125 bn from Saddam's Baathist government.