THE head of the Iraqi parliament, Hajim al-Hassani, announced yesterday that the majority Shi’ite and Kurdish factions had agreed on the wording of a new “compromise constitution” which they believed had been amended sufficiently to appease the Sunni minority.

However, Sunni politicians submitted counterproposals, in a move that threatens to prolong Iraq’s political deadlock. Their intransigence raises the possibility that the document will be rejected in a national referendum on October 15.

That would constitute a serious setback to Iraq’s development as an independent state, hampering American and British plans for the withdrawal of troops next year.

Having consistently missed deadlines for the constitution’s final draft for the past two weeks, the Shi’ite and Kurdish negotiators appeared to ride roughshod over their Sunni rivals.

The Sunnis fear that the new constitution will prepare the way for a federal Iraq, in which the oil wealth will be carved up between the Kurdish-dominated north and the Shi’ite south. They are also angry that former members of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated Ba’ath party would be barred from taking public office again.

Having largely boycotted the January elections, the Sunnis, who make up 20% of the population, have just 17 of 271 seats in parliament. Their only chance of blocking the constitution is in the referendum.

Desperate to keep the political process on track, the American military authorities made further attempts to mollify the Sunnis yesterday by announcing the release of 1,000 detainees — most of them former Ba’ath party members — from Abu Ghraib prison.

President George W Bush is so concerned about the collapse of the political process that he telephoned Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of the main Shi’ite leaders, last week, imploring him to try to keep the Sunnis involved.

The “compromise” being offered to the Sunnis appeared to be a fudge, leaving the question of the country’s federal structure until after elections scheduled for December. The question of political participation by former Ba’athists would also be left until after the assembly had been formed.

“A parliamentary agreement has been reached between the Kurdish coalition and the [Shi’ite] alliance on accepting the suggestions of the forces that did not take part in the elections and it will be announced tomorrow,” said al- Hassani, himself a Sunni Arab.

Ali al-Dabbagh, a Shi’ite member of the panel drafting the constitution, said that if parliament approved the text, 5m copies would be handed out to Iraqis within days.

However, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni negotiator, dispelled any optimism by describing the Shi’ite-Kurdish compromise as heralding a “terrifying and dark future awaiting Iraq”.

A “no” vote in the referendum in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces would be sufficient to kill the constitution. Sunnis form the majority in four central provinces.

Although the Kurdish population appears to be solidly behind the constitution, believing it will help them to gain increased autonomy, there are still doubters among Shi’ites.

They have rallied behind Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who believes that many of the poor around Baghdad will be marginalised in a federal Iraq.

Hossein al-Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, has also warned Iraq’s Shi’ite community about the constitution. He believes that a proposal to draw on Islam as the basis of all legislation could lead the country to ruin.

Khomeini, who has a house in Najaf, the holy city 100 miles south of Baghdad, has little in common ideologically with his grandfather, advocating multi-party democracy, religious tolerance and increased women’s rights. He fears that hardline mullahs could initiate a conservative clampdown.

It remains to be seen, however, whether he can get his message across to Iraqis. Friends in Iran said that the authorities there had confiscated his passport, preventing his return to Iraq.

Unable to visit Iraq during Saddam’s rule, Khomeini spent his formative years studying in the Iranian holy city of Qom, yet became deeply disillusioned by the brutality of the Islamic republic.

Since the allied overthrow of Saddam in 2003, he has even visited Washington — a move unthinkable for his grandfather, who famously labelled America as “the great Satan”.

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