Iraq's parliament received a draft of the country's constitution less than five minutes before tonight's midnight deadline, but there was no vote on the highly contested document.
Parliamentary speaker Hajim al-Hassani told members a text of the document had been received but said the final wording would have to be worked out within the coming three days.
The draft is believed to state that Islam will be the "main source" for legislation and laws that contradict religious teachings will be banned, members of the parliamentary drafting panel said.
The draft of the constitution was due to be presented by August 15th, but a week ago parliament voted to extend the deadline by one week. The speaker said he expected remaining differences to be ironed out in the coming days.
For Iraq's Sunni Arab community, the minority that dominated the country under Saddam Hussein and which has fed the insurgency over the past two years, the suggestion that the draft also grants federalism to the Kurds, also proves a stumbling block.
The rival Shi'ite and Kurdish communities sidestepped strident Sunni opposition by using their large majority in the National Assembly to secure approval.
Sunni politicians, who have negotiated over the constitution for the past two months, reacted angrily to the Shi'ite-Kurdish plan, but there was little they could do to stop it.
"At this stage, it's down to the referendum," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a political scientist at Baghdad University and an activist in the Sunni Arab community. "That is the best way at this stage to reject the constitution."
Having largely boycotted elections in January, Sunnis have just less than 20 seats in the 275-member National Assembly and only modest representation on the constitution-drafting team.
In the end, the newly dominant Shi'ites and Kurds, the winners of January's landmark poll, ignored them.
"This will complicate an already complicated situation," Saleh al-Mutlak, one of the main Sunni negotiators, told reporters after the Shi'ite-Kurdish plan became clear.
Asked if it could lead to an increase in violence from the Sunni community, he said: "It will increase everything."
"It pulls us away from reconciliation."
Shi'ite negotiators, who have in the past cast doubt on how much the Sunnis on the constitution-writing team represented their community, said they thought the text would be accepted by all factions in parliament, including Sunnis.
But before tonight's parliamentary vote, Sunnis were plotting their next move, which involves becoming more engaged in the political process in order to block Shi'ite-Kurdish autonomy aspirations.
Once approved by parliament, the constitution has to be voted on in a referendum in mid-October. If approved then, new elections will be held under the charter in mid-December.
But if two thirds of voters in three or more of Iraq's 18 provinces vote No in the referendum, the constitution is rejected.
Sunni Muslim imams and politicians have been urging Sunnis to register to vote in the referendum, having perhaps sensed that failure was looming in the constitutional negotiations.
Three of Iraq's provinces - Anbar, Salaheddin and Nineveh - have majority Sunni populations. If politicians can mobilise the vote in those areas, they may block the constitution.
But even if they cannot get two-thirds in all three, they say they can convince enough voters to join them to swing the vote in their favour.
"We will not be silent," Soha Allawi, a Sunni Arab member of the constitution drafting committee, told Reuters. "We will campaign for public awareness 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," she said.
One key ally, Sunnis say, could be Moqtada al-Sadr, the young Shi'ite cleric whose forces have led two uprisings against US forces. Sadr has a wealth of support in the Shi'ite south, as well as among the poor of resource-rich Baghdad.
His supporters marched in Baghdad last week denouncing parts of the constitution, including federalism, which Sunnis reject.
"There is a unity among people who reject some of the principles in the constitution, even if they are from different sects," said Nadhmi. "It is not just a Sunni-Shi'ite thing."