Iraqi constitution committee leader to be announced Tuesday News
Iraqi constitution committee leader to be announced Tuesday

[JURIST] AP is reporting that Hummam Hammoudi, a Shiite Muslim cleric who is a senior aide in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq [Global Security.com backgrounder], will likely be announced as head of the Iraqi constitution committee. The formal announcement is expected Tuesday during a meeting of the National Assembly [Wikipedia profile]. It is also expected that legislator Fouad Massoum, a Kurd, and Sunni Arab legislator Adnan al-Janabi, will be named as Hammoudi's deputies. The appointment of a Sunni deputy is a positive move toward more Sunni inclusion [JURIST report] in both the government and in the process to draft the constitution [JURIST news archive]. Under the Transitional Administrative Law [text], the constitution must be drawn up by mid-August and put to a nationwide referendum by October. Earlier this month, the National Assembly appointed [JURIST report] a 55-member committee of legislators from Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups to draw up the charter. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.