Draft constitution: Iraq is divided

Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds remained deadlocked on crucial matters including the role of Islam.

Iraqi leaders met on Saturday in a series of increasingly frantic efforts to resolve outstanding differences on key issues blocking agreement on a draft constitution due to be submitted to legislators next week.

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With only two days remaining before Monday's deadline, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds remained deadlocked on crucial matters including the role of Islam, the distribution of oil wealth, the status of women and the proposed federal structure.

If an agreement cannot be reached on a new charter, the current parliament and government will have to be dissolved under the Transitional Administrative Law. This would likely be a further blow to Iraq's transition to democracy and to Washington's efforts to take the steam out of the mainly Sunni Arab insurgency by maintaining the momentum toward normalizing the political situation.

Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni representative on the drafting committee, said negotiations had stalled after "deep differences" emerged between the parties.

He said Shiites were demanding that the new charter explicitly state that the decrees of the Marjiyah- their religious leadership- were sacred, something both the Sunnis and Kurds oppose.

Al-Mutlaq said the Kurds were demanding that provincial governments should control over both "discovered and undiscovered resources," which would give their self-governing region a significant slice of Iraq's oil wealth.