US gives Iraq 6 months to draft constitution

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 29, 2003

US gives Iraq 6 months to draft constitution

The United States has given a six-month period for the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) to prepare a new constitution, a spokesman for the US State Department said in Baghdad on Sunday.

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The United States has given a six-month period for the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) to prepare a new constitution, a spokesman for the US State Department said in Baghdad on Sunday.

The six-month deadline was first announced by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday, Nabil al-Khuli told reporters.

"Six months seems to be a good timeline to put out there for the creation of a constitution," Powell said at a press conference in New York.

It was the first time that the United States made a timeline for the reconstruction of Iraq, a sign of compromise with Washington's major rivals in the United Nations.

Powell did not give a clear idea when the timeline would begin, but the top US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said the days should be counted when a constitutional assembly is put in place.

"I think if you read carefully what the secretary was talking about, he was talking about the period after the... constitutional conference convention is assembled," Bremer said.

"There is another unknown period which precedes that, which is when do we see the constitutional conference convened?" he told a press conference broadcast live by CNN on Saturday.

On Friday, a source from the IGC-handpicked preparatory constitutional committee said the council was hopeful that a draft constitution would be written in six months.

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