Sunnis Accept Deal on Charter

Top Iraqi politicians said late Tuesday that they had reached a deal to persuade leading Sunni Arabs to support a draft constitution that will be the subject of a national referendum Saturday.

Under the terms of the compromise, Sunni leaders would drop their opposition to the constitution if the current National Assembly requires its successor to renegotiate the charter. A new legislature is to be elected in December, and the deal mandates that a second constitutional referendum would be held within four months.

Although it was not immediately clear whether most Sunni Arabs would accept the deal, it was hailed by leaders of the main Sunni Arab political party, which did not participate in last January’s national elections.

“If the present National Assembly approves this amendment, we will change our attitude to say yes,” said Ayad Samarayee, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni Arab group.

One Shiite politician, Saad Jawad of the Supreme Council for the Revolution of Iraq, called the deal “an added bonus” to increase the “yes” vote in the referendum without substantively changing the text.

“This is not a negotiation about changing the constitution directly. It is more of a political assurance,” he said.

Sunni Arabs, a minority of Iraq’s population, ruled the nation for decades under Saddam Hussein and some of them have been spearheading the insurgency. Despite the agreement with the Iraqi Islamic Party, other Sunni groups remained hostile to the draft.

“We don’t have any agreement with our brothers in the party to vote ‘yes’ for the constitution,” Salih Mutlaq, of the Sunni Arab National Dialogue Council, said in a television interview.

Still, the announcement was a bit of hopeful news on a day when insurgent car bombs and gunfire erupted across Iraq, including a suicide blast in the troubled northern city of Tall Afar. More than 40 people died in the violence, raising concerns about security ahead of Saturday’s referendum.

The Tall Afar suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in the city’s central market, killing 30 people and injuring 45. The city was the scene of a major U.S. and Iraqi military offensive last month that officials said resulted in the death of 160 suspected insurgents and the capture of more than 700 others.

The apparent deal late Tuesday came after a week of U.S.-brokered negotiations between Sunni Arab leaders and officials of Shiite and Kurdish political groups to reshape the constitution, even as copies were being distributed throughout Iraq before the weekend referendum.

“This [compromise] relieves all the tension and the expected violence of the coming months,” said Alaa Makki, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party. Makki said the new accord would require the next assembly to appoint a committee to draw up revisions to the current draft.

Ali Dabagh, a Shiite politician, said the deal was “almost approved” pending its reading before the National Assembly today.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Noel Clay said there was no immediate reaction to the reported deal.

The agreement requires the next National Assembly to create a committee that can suggest amendments to the constitution. Shiite negotiator Jawad Maliki, confirming the broad outlines of the deal in an interview on Al Arabiya satellite news channel, said the committee will get only one chance to make revisions. The assembly was to meet tonight to discuss the deal.

Representatives of the three groups said the compromise language must be read aloud today in the assembly in order for the deal to stick. Before Tuesday night’s developments, Sunni Arabs had been trying to muster enough votes to defeat the document. According to national election law, the constitution cannot be ratified if two-thirds of voters in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces vote “no.” Polls by Iraqi and international nongovernmental organizations have shown that the constitution is likely to pass, but many observers worried that it would -- without future revision -- further divide the nation along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Sunni Arabs have opposed the draft constitution because they say it would grant Iraq’s Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated regions too much power. Sunnis have also contended that the provisions would distribute natural resources unequally and fail to emphasize Iraq’s Arab national identity.

Sunni Arabs have also complained that they did not have an adequate role in drafting the document, which they feared would set the stage for secession by provinces in the predominantly Kurdish north and mostly Shiite south.

Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the January parliamentary elections and are underrepresented in the current government, expect to gain more seats in the Dec. 15 balloting for parliament and thus have more clout in reshaping the constitution.

It was unclear Tuesday night whether the apparent deal on the constitution would stave off further attacks like the one in Tall Afar.

Residents had begun trickling back into Tall Afar since the sweep, and Iraq’s chief electoral officer, Adil Lami, said Tuesday that there were plans to have a polling station in the city Saturday. But victims of Tuesday’s attack complained that a drawdown of U.S. and Iraqi military forces had allowed insurgents to prey upon the town.

“I was there, and I am sure there weren’t any military convoys or Iraqi police or national guard in the market,” said Talib Ali, lying in a bed at the general hospital in the city, about 250 miles north of the capital.

“We didn’t notice him,” Ali, 45, said of the bomber. “He drove so fast in his car. He picked the most crowded area, where people were gathered near the food ration store. I don’t think those terrorists know the meaning of God, and they don’t have the least right to claim that they’re religious.”

In Baghdad, Army Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, said there were still U.S. and Iraqi troops in Tall Afar, but he didn’t know precisely how many. He said that military offensives cannot prevent every bombing.

“The offensive that we conducted up there was to return the city to the citizens so they could have a secure environment so they could vote,” Boylan said. “But these types of attacks are near about impossible to stop completely because they use civilian vehicles or suicide vests or indirect fire methods.

“Just because we secure an area one day doesn’t mean they can’t attack on another day,” he added.

Many Iraqis have anticipated a surge of violence in the days approaching the referendum, citing past attacks clustered around key election periods. U.S. and Iraqi officials said such attacks would be designed to dissuade people from participating in the political process.

About 240 people have died in the last two weeks in insurgent and sectarian attacks.

Baghdad was also a locus of violence Tuesday, as two suicide bombings and four drive-by shootings resulted in the death of at least 14 people and left 29 others wounded.

The most lethal attack in the capital was a car bomb that exploded at an Iraqi army checkpoint on a busy commercial street. The conflagration killed eight soldiers and wounded a dozen more people.

In Samarra to the north, a few minutes before sundown, gunmen killed a top cleric in front of his house.

And two explosions, one involving a female suicide bomber, targeted American convoys in the northern city of Mosul. At least one American vehicle was engulfed in flames, but U.S. military officials reported no deaths.

Boylan insisted that the violence would fail to prevent “a resilient public” from voting Saturday, but some Iraqi leaders were less certain.

Jawad, the Shiite National Assembly member with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said he was concerned that insurgents would target Shiites in an effort to prevent approval of the constitution. He wondered whether U.S. and Iraqi forces would provide adequate protection.

“They want to ignite a civil war and to make the constitution fail,” Jawad said. “When they did the sweep in Tall Afar, I was given assurances that forces would stay there, but for some reason they have withdrawn. If the government forces do not get in there, I think it will have an effect on the ability of people to go out and cast their vote.”

Insurgents this week have targeted polling centers and election officials in four attacks in Diyala province, officials said.

The explosion in Tall Afar was especially disheartening for residents who had suffered through the offensive or had waited in refugee camps. In an effort to reestablish the city, a government spokesman on Sunday pledged $38 million for rebuilding projects and $100 for each family.

On Tuesday, however, U.S. and Iraqi troops cordoned off much of the city. A visitor had to pass through more than a dozen checkpoints and was greeted gruffly by Iraqi soldiers who threatened witnesses with imprisonment if they described the bombing.

“We were sick and tired of staying home all the time,” said Ashour Mohammed, 35, from his hospital bed.

“So I finally decided to go out shopping. I was happy to see that normal everyday life was coming back to my city that had suffered for far too long. Then, from out of nowhere came this cruel suicide bomber.”

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington and a special correspondent in Tall Afar contributed to this report.