Last Chance for Inclusion in Iraq

Steering Iraq away from civil war and toward a workable new constitution is far more important than holding to an arbitrarily chosen date on the transition calendar. That is why it was right for Iraqi authorities to delay, for at least a couple of weeks, a potentially crucial national conference originally scheduled for this past weekend. The specific function of the conference is to choose a national council to oversee the current, narrowly based interim government. But its real importance is the opportunity it offers to attract dangerously alienated Sunni and Shiite factions into peaceful political bargaining.
Unfortunately, the choosing of conference delegates had become so badly skewed that this possibility was being squandered. Iraq cannot afford to pass up such chances. The postponement creates a chance to try again.
Much of the credit for this decision goes to the United Nations, which had raised serious concerns about delegate selection to anyone who would listen, from Iraqi functionaries to American diplomats. Helping to organize this conference is one of the main responsibilities assigned to the U.N. by the most recent Security Council resolution.
The U.N.'s next challenge will be to persuade the interim government to stop packing the conference with its own allies at the expense of Sunni nationalists and radical Shiites who might be willing to abandon armed resistance for a real chance to shape the new Iraq.
The armed insurgency has hardly melted away since the nominal transfer of sovereignty five weeks ago, as the weekend's spate of bombings made clear. It remains the single biggest obstacle to Iraq's political and physical reconstruction. A murderous car-bombing killed some 70 people last week, and almost every day seems to bring kidnappings of foreign civilians, with grisly threats of beheadings.
The conference should also include a wide range of secular Iraqis and independents not affiliated with the exile-dominated political parties.
Washington is now trying to keep a relatively low diplomatic profile in Iraq, hoping to sustain the illusion that the interim government is fully in charge. This is disingenuous, and not only because of the continued presence of nearly 140,000 American occupation troops. It was the United States that created a woefully unrepresentative governing council and that then let the exile politicians on that thinly rooted body shape the interim government. The Bush administration cannot afford to simply stand aside and see these problems compounded.
The deep alienation of so many pivotal groups of Iraqis is one of the main reasons that the insurgency continues to gain strength. Fixing this fundamental problem should begin with a more wisely organized national conference.