IRAQ: Iraq's leaders were struggling to meet yet another deadline on a new constitution last night amid increasing American alarm that the draft will exclude Sunni Arabs.
The ruling Shia and Kurdish coalition held what were billed as last-ditch talks with Sunni leaders, but there was no sign of a breakthrough as the midnight deadline approached.
President Bush phoned one of the most powerful Shia leaders, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, to request concessions on two sticking points - federalism and purges of members of the Ba'ath party of the ousted president, Saddam Hussein - to try to win Sunni support for the draft.
With time running out, US officials also appealed to the most revered Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to help find a compromise acceptable to the country's main ethnic and sectarian groups.
Sunnis, a restive minority from whom much of the insurgency is drawn, have served warning that Iraq will move closer to full-scale civil war if Shias and Kurds bulldoze over their objections.
After the US intervention, Shia negotiators offered to leave some elements of federalism to be decided by a future parliament. "We cannot offer more than that," said Abbas al-Bayati, a Shia official.
Sunni negotiators did not immediately respond, but there was little optimism that they would accept the compromise.
"Don't follow constitutions of the infidels," one influential Sunni cleric, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei, said at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque.
"We don't want a constitution that brings the curse of separation and division to this country."
As the wrangling continued, negotiators said efforts to reach consensus might soon be abandoned, leaving unamended the draft presented to parliament on Monday - and the version to be put before voters in a referendum on October 15th.
Government officials said parliament had fulfilled its legal obligation by receiving the text and did not need to vote on it, even if the subsequent closed-door talks produced a tweaked version.
Negotiators have extended their deadline for agreement three times and a fourth was possible last night. But the referendum deadline is unbreakable, and millions of copies of the constitution need to be printed soon.
The constitution was billed as a unifying process for post-Saddam Iraq, paving the way for elections in December designed to bolster the state's democratic legitimacy and, in time, sap support for the insurgency.
The Kurds and Shias agreed on a text which defined Iraq as a federal republic, with Islam as a main source of legislation.
Sunni Arab leaders complained that they had been sidelined, and rejected federalism as a recipe for national disintegration, which would maroon the Sunnis without oil and caught between a Kurdistan in the north and a Shia region in the south.
Many Shias loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are also opposed to the charter, and rallies in several cities yesterday brought hundreds of thousands on to the streets.
Clashes between rival Shia factions have left at least eight people dead this week and have raised the spectre of further schism within the country.
Despite US pressure, the Sunnis refused to sign up to a slightly diluted form of federalism - increasing the risk of intensified violence if the constitution goes ahead in its present form. US military officials are taking the threat seriously.
Sunnis comprise only a fifth of the 26-million population, but can exercise a veto in the the referendum. If two-thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote "no", the constitution falls. Sunnis are thought to be a majority in four.
If Sunnis delivered on their threat it would wreck Washington's plan to stabilise the country and start withdrawing troops next year. - (Guardian service)
Failed Iraqi asylum seekers accused the British government of recklessness yesterday for threatening to send them back to their homeland despite its admission that the country is dangerous. Around 40 Iraqis gathered outside the Home Office in London to protest against the government's decision to toughen its policy on deporting people to Iraq.