Iraq gets constitution draft, Sunnis hold up vote

BAGHDAD - Iraq's majority Shi'ites and Kurdish allies pushed a draft constitution into parliament, minutes before a midnight deadline, but minority Sunnis, warning of civil war, held up a final vote amid confusion.

With the Shi'ite Islamist-led coalition talking of a "final" document being completed, the speaker of the National Assembly announced to applause the deadline had been met and a draft constitution presented. But without calling a vote he dismissed the chamber, saying there would be three more days of talks.

It remained unclear how far continuing Sunni Arab objections to regional autonomy within a federal state could be overcome and Shi'ite leaders said they were ready to press on regardless.

"If it passes, there will be an uprising in the streets," Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak said, adding that further blockage on a deal would in his view trigger elections to a new interim assembly.

But Shi'ite and Kurdish delegates were giving little ground and US diplomats are pressing hard to keep to the timetable.

"We have fully completed the constitution," Shi'ite vice president Adel Abdel Mehdi told Reuters.

"But we may need to modify some points to satisfy the others."

Speaker Hajim al-Hassani said four points, including the key issues of the very concept of a "federal" state and control of oil revenues, were still in dispute -- much the same as when an original deadline was put back by a week last Monday.

Mutlak said he reckoned there were many more objections.

But the Shi'ite head of the constitutional drafting committee, Humam Hamoudi, said that if there were still no compromises in three days: "The constitution will keep moving."

Kurdish lawmaker Ahmed Pinjwani conceded, however, that if the Sunnis could not be won over, "It will move with a limp."

US president George W Bush, himself campaigning to quell growing disquiet at home over the costly military occupation of Iraq, has pressed hard for the US-sponsored timetable to be respected and says it will help sap the Sunni Arab insurgency.

The cost may be a collapse of a fragile attempt at consensus politics that had brought Sunni leaders, who shunned the January vote that produced the parliament, into the drafting process.

The draft prepared by Shi'ites and Kurds, assisted by US diplomats but without Sunni involvement, gave ground to some of the once dominant minority's fears of Shi'ites and Kurds hiving off strong federal regions in the oil-rich north and south.

But Sunni Arabs, outraged at what they called a "breach of consensus", stood by a demand "federalism" be left out.

The text seen by Reuters said Iraq was a "federal" republic. The draft also made Islam "a main source" of law in what seemed a compromise between Islamist Shi'ites and secular Kurds.

"We will campaign ... to tell both Sunnis and Shi'ites to reject the constitution, which has elements that will lead to the break-up of Iraq and civil war," Soha Allawi, a Sunni Arab member of the drafting committee, told Reuters.

Parliament had faced dissolution if no draft were adopted by midnight (8am Tuesday NZT). Word earlier in the evening that the Shi'te majority was ready to push a deal through provoked scenes of rejoicing in the holy city of Najaf and other Shi'ite towns.

"We cannot wait and give them all the time they need to be convinced ... If our Sunni Arab brothers don't want to vote for federalism then they can reject it," said Jalal-el-Din al-Sagheer, a Shi'ite cleric on the constitutional committee.

Interim rules say the charter is rejected if two thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it.

Kurdish delegate Abdel Khalek Zangana said the provision on federalism satisfied Kurdish demands for guarantees they would retain the broad autonomy they already have in the north.

One Sunni leader said the text had dropped wording that forbade secession from Iraq; Kurdish leaders say they do not want to break away entirely but want to keep the option open.

US diplomats, led by ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, architect of the new Afghan constitution, have been working hard to save the deadline. Secular Kurdish delegates had complained that he had made concessions to the Shi'ite Islamists in allowing for a greater role for Islam in Iraqi law.

The draft document, seen in part by Reuters, described Iraq as a "republican, parliamentarian, democratic and federal" state. It also said, in general terms, that natural resources would be controlled jointly by central and local government.

In former rebel strongholds like Falluja and across the Sunni heartlands of the north and west, which largely shunned the January polls that produced the Shi'ite and Kurd-dominated interim legislature, voters have been registering in large numbers.

Some Shi'ites, notably supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, also reject federalism.

With discontent spreading at the failure of the present government to curb violence or improve living standards, rival parties see a chance to embarrass it at the polls.

If the referendum ratifies the constitution, voting in December will be for a full-term parliament with full powers.

- REUTERS