With a deadline three days away, Iraqi leaders attempted on Friday to resolve disputes over the content of a permanent constitution they hope could end violence in the fractured country.
An Iraqi presidential spokesman said there was still no agreement on key issues like regional government and Islamic law that leaders from the majority Shia community, Kurds who have autonomy in the north and once-dominant Sunnis have been arguing over for weeks since broadly agreeing much of the draft.
"There are a series of meetings that have already begun today and they will continue into the night. Then tomorrow it will be the same. I really think they will keep on meeting and discussing right up to August 15," said Kamran Qaradaghi, a spokesman for interim President Jalal Talabani.
Asked whether there had been any breakthroughs on the toughest issues, he said: "Nothing has come of it yet." One member of the drafting panel, Saad Qindeel, said he believed a draft text, requiring further debate, could be presented to a full session of parliament as early as Sunday.
A critical issue is the nature of federalism - the quest for wording to satisfy Kurdish demands for continued autonomy in the north and Shia hopes for new autonomy in the south.
Another is the role of Islam in a new Iraq that Washington and many Iraqi lobby groups hope will retain a secular outlook.
Several members of the 71-seat panel charged with drafting the document foresee that some disputes will be left for Iraq's parliament to decide after a charter is completed by August 15. The constitution will be put to a referendum in mid-October.
The interim government, dominated by Shias and Kurds, hopes the charter will take the sting out of the Sunni insurgency and allow some 140,000 US troops to begin withdrawing from the country of 26 million.
A Sunni preacher at Friday prayers in Baghdad slammed federalism and pressed Sunni Arabs to reverse a decline in their influence since the 2003 war and a January election boycott.
"We call on you all to take part in the elections," Mahmoud al-Sumaida'i told hundreds of worshippers at the prominent Umm al Qura mosque, adding: "We don't want federalism."
On Thursday, Shia Islamist leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), made a dramatic call in the holy city of Najaf for an autonomous Shia region across the oil-rich south.
Minority Sunni and secular opponents, as well as rival Shia Islamists in the coalition national government, poured cold water on the idea, which fuelled fears of sectarian battles over oil and Iranian-style religious rule in the south.
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