Iraq approves limited minority quotas on provincial councils
Christians and three other religious minorities are to get a total of six seats across three councils, half the 12 seats proposed by the U.N.
Reporting from Baghdad — Iraqi leaders ratified a bill Saturday giving minorities a quota of seats on provincial governing councils, overriding protests by Christian lawmakers who said they had been cheated.
Christians had demanded that the country's three-member presidency council, which must ratify legislation passed by parliament, veto the bill.
Lawmakers on Monday approved the quota, which gives Christians and three other minorities a total of six seats split among the governing councils in Baghdad, Nineveh and Basra provinces. The United Nations' special representative in Iraq had recommended 12 minority seats, a number Christian legislators had supported.
The three provincial councils have a total of 129 members.
In a statement following Saturday's ratification, the chief of staff for the presidency council, Naseer Ani, said its members had consulted with Vatican representatives and held "extensive discussion" about the bill. They considered the U.N. recommendations but decided to ratify the legislation unchanged out of respect for the parliamentarians' choice, he said.
"This comes as a recognition and respect for the parliament judgment," Ani said.
The presidency council comprises the president, who is a Kurd, and two vice presidents, one a Shiite Muslim and the other a Sunni Arab.
Ani said another bill would be presented in the future to guarantee minority rights.
The new law only governs seats in provincial elections, which are scheduled to take place by Jan. 31. No date has been set for the vote, which is hoped will repair lopsided provincial power structures created by wide-scale boycotts of the 2005 elections.
Younadam Kanna, a leading Christian lawmaker, said Saturday that if the quota were not changed, the community would have "no choice but to boycott the elections." He expressed concerns that without greater representation for minorities on some councils, particularly in Nineveh, they would become caught in the middle of the Kurdish-Arab power struggle raging in that part of the country.
In October, more than 1,000 Christian families fled Mosul, capital of Nineveh, after Arab-Kurdish tensions fueled anti-Christian violence. Christian residents as well as their leaders variously accused Kurds and Arabs of targeting them.
