IRAQI leaders were locked in eleventh-hour negotiations yesterday over the future of the Iraqi state as the the deadline approached for the delivery of the country’s first constitution.

Members of parliament have been summoned to a special session this evening in the hope of starting a review of the charter which should have begun last Friday.

Negotiations between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions have repeatedly stalled over the role Islam should play in determining the laws of the country and the degree of autonomy to be given to each region.

Those involved have given wildly different accounts of the process under way. Shia representatives say that progress is being made whereas Sunni leaders, unnerved by the push for federalism, say it would take “divine intervention” to bring the sides together.

One of the few points that was agreed on was the name of the country — the Republic of Iraq — which rejected the Sunni demand for “Arab”, the Kurdish demand for “Federal” and the Shia desire for “Islamic”.

Representatives said that they had also agreed a formula for the division of oil revenues although there were suggestions that this was not yet written in stone.

The issue of federalism, once largely a Kurdish demand for recognition of their de facto autonomy in the north, was complicated last week by a push from the Shias for an autonomous region in the south. Sunni leaders said that such a proposition espoused, in effect, the break-up of the country into an oil-rich north and south and an impoverished and insurgency-wracked centre left to fend for itself.

Fears of missing the deadline, seen as a key milestone for American withdrawal, prompted the US to get involved in negotiations, even presenting a written proposal outlining a skeletal agreement with key details to be decided later.

Some were less than receptive to such overt puppeteering, however, arguing that American involvement could discredit a process that is being sold as wholly Iraqi.

There have also been fears that the Sunnis could yet walk out if they feel that their voices are not being heard. Sunnis are vastly under-represented in parliament because of their boycott of the elections and cannot stop the charter’s passage through the assembly without additional support.

Once parliament signs off on the charter it must be approved by a referendum, scheduled for October. If two thirds of the electorate in three provinces reject it the process will have to begin again.

Sunni clerics, who earlier this year were persuading people to stay away from the ballot, used Friday’s sermons to exhort people to register for the referendum and vote down the constitution.

“No constitution done under occupation can ever represent Iraqis,” Ahmed al-Samara’i, a Sunni from Fallujah, said. “I will vote against it.”

But for most ordinary Iraqis this latest chapter in their long and violent trudge towards selfdetermination, barely registered. With violence in Baghdad reaching record levels, unemployment above 50 per cent and basic services as bad as they have been since the end of the war, most of their concerns are far more basic.

“The constitution is not one of our daily concerns at the moment,” Mohamed Shati, a resident from a Shia neighbourhood in Baghdad, said. “Our main concerns nowadays are the security situation, the services like electricity, water, and petrol. Seven people have been killed here last week and that’s just in the street where I live.”

Leaders hope that an agreement on the constitution will pave the way to better security. But the discovery in southern Baghdad of the bodies of 30 people, including two women, apparently murdered by insurgents, was a reminder of the violence plaguing Iraq.

One American soldier was killed on patrol yesterday and three others were wounded in a blast east of Rutbah, 250 miles (400 km) west of Baghdad, the military said. One soldier was killed on Saturday in another roadside bombing.

Italy has begun to withdraw some of its 3,000 troops and police from Iraq in what the Italian Ministry of Defence called “a readjustment co-ordinated with our allies and the Government in Baghdad”. A total of 130 Italian marines from the elite San Marco regiment, whose tours at Nassiriyah in southern Iraq have ended, returned home earlier this month and will not be replaced.

STICKING POINTS

Times Recommends

• Cairo women fight back against harassment
• Weapons-grade flirting for Hillary and David
• More at stake in Start talks than US and Russia