Three days before a referendum on the constitution, Iraqi politicians celebrated their completion of a final draft with flowery speeches about unity and marriage at a ceremony inside the US-protected "Green Zone" last night. But continuing violence, which claimed at least 30 lives yesterday, and the opposition of much of the Sunni Muslim community, cast a shadow over the agreement. Lara Marlowe reports from Baghdad
In Tal Afar, 400km north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed at least 30 army recruits and wounded 35 others. It was the third suicide bombing in Tal Afar since US troops claimed to have killed 200 insurgents there last month.
The celebration broadcast on al-Iraqiya government television was intended to encourage Iraqis to vote Yes in the referendum on Saturday.
Kurdish president Jalal Talabani, Shia prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Sunni speaker of parliament Hajim al-Hassani all participated.
Al-Iraqiya did not mention that other prominent Sunnis, including the powerful Association of Muslim Clerics, are calling for a boycott or a No vote.
"This is a ploy to persuade people not to vote No to the ethnic and sectarian racist constitution," the Iraqi National Dialogue, made up of 19 Sunni groups, said in a statement.
Four amendments, referred to as "tweaks" by a US official, won over a portion of the Sunni leadership.
The main provision is that the next parliament, to be elected on December 15th, will have four months to change the constitution.
Some Sunni leaders now regret boycotting the last parliamentary election in January.
The provision to re-examine the constitution in the winter is meant to give them an incentive to participate in the December poll. Any further changes would be subject to another referendum.
The version celebrated here last night is at least the third "final" draft. Earlier agreements were announced on August 28th and September 13th. Different versions of the text have circulated, leading to confusion about what it actually says.
Because there is no time to reprint the constitution before Saturday's vote, the government says it will inform the population of changes through newspapers and television.
The governorate of Mosul complained it had not received a single copy of the constitution. Earlier this week, 10,000 copies were distributed to detention centres where occupation forces hold more than 10,000 Iraqis prisoner. Government spokesmen said that even the fallen dictator Saddam Hussein - who may be hanged after a trial scheduled to begin on October 19th - will be allowed to vote in Saturday's referendum.
Other "tweaks" to the constitution include a statement stressing the unity of Iraq, the provision that Arabic remains an official language in Kurdistan, and a promise that former members of the Baath Party will be prosecuted only if they committed crimes.
The constitution confirms the regional autonomy of Kurdistan, and allows it to incorporate the oil-rich province of Kirkuk in 2007 if a majority of residents vote to join Kurdistan.
The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is allied with Iran, has proposed creating a Shia Muslim "super-region" of Iraq's nine southern provinces.
In the words of Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador who is an adviser to the Kurds: "Underneath an Islamic veneer, Iraq's new constitution ratifies the division of Iraq into three disparate entities: Kurdistan in the north, an Iranian-influenced Islamic state in the south, and, in the centre, a Sunni region that has no clear political identity."
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American, spent the past four days with the Iraqi Constitutional Committee overseeing negotiations.
Another American, New York University law professor Noah Feldman, heavily influenced the early stages of drafting.