IRAQ: With a deadline three days away, Iraqi leaders attempted yesterday to resolve disputes over the content of a permanent constitution they hope could end violence in the fractured country.
An Iraqi presidential spokesman said there was still no agreement on key issues like regional government and Islamic law. However, one member of the drafting panel, Saad Qindeel, said he believed a draft text, requiring further debate, could be presented to a full session of parliament as early as tomorrow.
Apart from drafts circulating from representatives of each of the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities, the US is also understood to have proposed a compromise draft text which is being considered.
A critical issue is federalism and the quest for wording that will satisfy Kurdish demands for continued autonomy in the north and Shia hopes for new autonomy in the south.
Another key issue is the role of Islam in a new Iraq that Washington and many Iraqi lobby groups hope will retain a secular outlook. The constitution will be put to a referendum in October.
"The Sunnis see a southern region as an Iranian project to control Iraq," one senior Iraqi politician said privately.
Mr Qindeel conceded yesterday that a Shia federal state in the south was unlikely to make it into the document, but that it would be raised later.