Last minute efforts to win Sunni support of constitution face deep divisions

Photo: An Iraqi food distribution agent counts copies of the new constitution in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq- With U.S. mediation, Shiite and Kurdish officials negotiated Sunday with Sunni Arab leaders over last minute additions to the constitution, trying to win Sunni support ahead of next weekend's crucial referendum. But the sides remained far apart over basic issues - including the federalism that Shiites and Kurds insist on - and copies of the constitution are already being passed out to the public. Though major attacks have waned in recent days, violence continued with insurgent violence killing 13 Iraqis. In one attack, masked gunmen in police commando uniforms burst into a school in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad, pulled a Shiite teacher out of his classroom and shot him to death in the hallway in front of his students, still sitting behind their desks, police said. A suicide car bomb killed a woman and a child in the southern city of Basra. A U.S. marine was killed by a roadside bomb in the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Saturday, the military announced. It was the ninth American to be killed in a series of offensives the military has been waging the past week in western Iraq in an attempt to knock al-Qaida militants and other insurgents off balance and prevent attacks during Saturday's national vote on the constitution. The death brought to 1,953 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Sunni-led insurgents are trying to prevent Iraqis from voting with a wave of attacks over the past two weeks. The government has launched campaign to convince Iraqis to go to the polls despite the threats - and despite calls by some Sunni Arabs for a boycott. "We think (a boycott) would weaken Iraq because the only way that Iraq can recover is done by concentrating on the political process, writing the constitution and participating in it," government spokesman Laith Kubba said. "Any act that calls for violence or boycotting would deviate the country from its course." Kubba fiercely denounced the insurgents, calling them "rats spreading plague among the people." Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said the number of foreign militants involved in Iraq's insurgency has fallen to around 900, from up to 3,000 three months ago. Their ranks have fallen because of deaths in U.S. and Iraqi military offensives - but also because al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has started sending fighters to other Arab countries to build terror networks there, Jabr said in an interview with the Arab daily Sharq al-Awsat. Iraq's Sunni Arab leaders are calling on their followers to turn out in force to vote in the referendum - but to vote "no" to defeat a draft constitution they say will break Iraqi into pieces, with Shiite and Kurdish mini-states in the north and south, with the Sunni minority left poor and weak in a central zone.

Though a minority, Sunnis can defeat the charter if they garner a two-thirds "no" vote in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces - and they have the potential to make that threshold in four provinces. But turnout is key, since they must outweigh Shiite and Kurdish populations in some of those areas. Even with copies of the official text of the constitution being distributed to voters to consider before the polls, all sides were debating last-minute changes in a bid to swing some Sunnis to a "yes" vote. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani met with Sunni Arab leaders Saturday and Sunday trying to convince them on the changes, officials from all sides said. The United States is eager to see the passage of the constitution, since its rejection would prolong Iraq's political instability for months - and could hamper the U.S. military's plans to start pulling out some troops next year. But there appeared to be too wide a gulf to convince Sunni leaders to drop their opposition. While Shiite and Kurdish parties were willing to make some cosmetic additions to the draft, they rejected what they called central changes sought by Sunnis, particularly ones aimed at reducing the strong powers the charter gives to regional administrations over the central government. The Sunnis seek in particular changes to the constitution's articles outlining the purging of members of Saddam Hussein's former Baath party - most of whose major figures were Sunnis - and others allowing provinces to join together into "regions" under a single administration that would have considerable powers. "We don't want a federal system. It shouldn't be a system of regions, it's a system of provinces," Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, said. He said the Sunnis want the articles on de-Baathification rewritten to "not single out the Baath party." The federalism terms are central to the constitution as it stands and the Shiite and Kurdish parties staunchly oppose them. Many of the same issues Sunnis are trying to change in the last minute talks were the subject of rancorous debate during the drafting of the constitution, which ended with the Shiites and Kurds approving the draft to be put to a referendum over Sunni opposition. In other violence Sunday, gunmen killed the bodyguard of a legislator in the northern city of Mosul and shot to death three Iraqi contractors in two attacks, in Baghdad and the town of Beiji to the north. Four policemen were slain in two separate Baghdad shootings, and an Iraqi was killed by gunmen in front of his shop selling construction materials in the capital. In Samarra, insurgents also killed the owner of a refrigerator repair shop. The bullet-riddled body of a woman in her 20s was found by the side of the road in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, an area of frequent insurgent slayings. By Kasem Zahra