Anti-war protest at Bush ranch

2005-08-14 08:26

Crawford - Anti-war protests swelled outside President George W Bush's Texas ranch on Saturday, as US officials reportedly worked behind the scenes to get Iraq's new constitution ready by its Monday deadline.

With the deadline looming for what the Bush administration sees as a key landmark in Iraq's recovery, the US has become more involved in the push to produce a draft constitution on time, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

"The Americans say they don't intervene, but they have intervened deep," Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the constitution committee, told the paper.

"They gave us a detailed proposal, almost a full version of a constitution. They try to compromise the different opinions of all the political blocs," Othman said.

" The US officials are more interested in the Iraqi constitution than the Iraqis themselves, because they promised their people that it will be done August 15."

According to the paper, US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad is now taking a central role in bringing rival Iraqi political groups together over the draft, offering written compromises on key issues in dispute, like regional autonomy and the role of Islam in Iraqi law.

The constitution is due to be presented to the Iraqi parliament on Monday and submitted to referendum in mid-October, opening the door to new legislative elections at least two months later.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Wednesday that Khalilzad had been "very dynamic and energetic in meeting with different stakeholders in the process as they seek our views, our opinions on things."

But he added, "It's important to stress that the final product will be the result of Iraqi deliberations and will reflect Iraqi priorities, Iraqi concerns and Iraqi values."

Meanwhile sagging US support for the war in recent polls and the anti-war protest outside Bush's vacation home underlined the need for the White House to show progress in Iraq.

The protest, which has drawn national attention, was launched a week ago by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq in April 2004, to call for the withdrawal of the 138 000 US troops deployed there.

Standing outside the gates of Bush' Prairie Chapel ranch, where he is taking a five-week break from Washington, Sheehan is demanding to see the president.

She has said she will follow him back to Washington and camp out in front of the White House if he refuses.

On Friday the president was forced to run a gantlet of demonstrators as he ventured from his ranch for a political fundraiser.

As Bush's motorcade sped past, Sheehan clutched a sign that read, "Why Do You Make Time for Donors And Not For Me?"

The demonstrators planted some 500 white wooden crosses on the road to the ranch, each with the name of a US soldier killed in Iraq.

On Saturday the number of demonstrators swelled to nearly 1 000 as Bush supporters squared off with the anti-war group under a sweltering August sun.

But with a recent spike in US casualties in Iraq, support for the war is flagging in the United States.

As the number of US troops killed since the war began in March 2003 rose to roughly 1 840 this week, around 61 percent of Americans disapproved of how the president is handling Iraq, according to a recent Newsweek magazine survey.

- SAPA