KurdistanObserver.com

The US envoy and Iraq's Sunni Arab leadership might seem strange bedfellows. The Sunnis continue to refer to the country's Sunni-led insurgency as the "resistance" and often view the US project here as determined to convert them into Iraq's new underclass. After all, the toppling of Saddam Hussein lifted the boot from the necks of Iraq's Kurds and Shiites, and ended the dominant status of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority.

But US officials say they recognize that if a constitution is completed without buy-in from Iraq's Sunni Arabs, and without language that balances most of the country's competing interests, then it won't have a chance of fulfilling its primary goal: Ending the war.

Forging a consensus that might turn the constitution into a sort of peace pact looks as if it will take more time. But the US administration is pushing for fast results, so Ambassador Khalilzad is caught in the paradoxical position of having to move fast, and go slow.

How far Khalilzad and the US can and will go in trying to forge a consensus, however, is an open question. The Bush administration is eager to see the completion of the constitution, which will be touted as a victory in order to shore up flagging domestic support for the war. Iraq's Shiite majority, who control the interim parliament, are also eager to take control of a fully sovereign nation.

Iraq's ethnic Kurds, who have fought the central government from their northern stronghold for much of the last 80 years, are also eager for a quick result that will create a federal Iraq that guarantees them wide autonomy.

Both Kurdish and Shiite leaders have insisted for much of the past week that Monday night's deadline will be met, but Sunni leaders - who hold 15 of the 71 seats on the drafting committee - have been just as insistent that expanded autonomy for the Kurds is out of the question. They also reject Shiite demands that a major role be created for the Shiite clergy in Iraq's legal structure.

"As we see it, most of the problems have been solved,'' says Ali al-Dabag, a Shiite member of the constitution drafting committee. "We should finish soon."

Though it's possible that Monday night's deadline could be met, if the public objections of leading Sunnis are to be believed, that will happen only by ignoring their demands. If the deadline isn't met, the transitional parliament will probably vote themselves more time, as they did when the first constitutional deadline was missed a week ago.

"If they make the deadline because the Shiites and Kurds essentially rammed a draft through over Sunni Arab objections, there will be hell to pay,'' says Wayne White, who was the principal Iraq analyst for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research until his retirement earlier this year.

"Despite the very real possibility that pushing through a draft constitution over Sunni Arab objections could prolong the violence, the Shiites and Kurds are pressing their agendas as if they had no understanding that such dire consequences were a serious possibility,'' says Mr. White.

US diplomats say they are aware of those risks, and Khalilzad's role has been to push them - sometimes cajoling, at other times reminding them of American blood spilled and money spent here - toward common ground. He participated in at least 10 hours of negotiations on Sunday, and was closeted with Iraqi political leaders throughout most of Monday.

Though in the past the US has insisted that Iraq would become a liberal, democratic model for the Arab world, the US ambassador has been a pragmatist in similar negotiations in the past. While serving as ambassador to Afghanistan, the country of his birth, Khalilzad helped write a constitution that carved out a major role for Islam in that country's laws.

"We are not getting any impression that they are with this side or with that. We feel they are trying to help our side as much as the other side," says Iyad al-Sammarai, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group whose leaders have been arrested by American forces in the past. "I'm sure [the US] has a feeling that if a constitution is approved only by the Shiites and Kurds, they will not get what they want. What they want is stability."

Still, Mr. Sammarai says it's unclear how much US pressure can bring in this process, or if the desire for fast results will lead the US to sign off on a constitution without Sunni backing. Iraq's interim parliament is at least nominally sovereign, though reliant on the protection of 130,000 American troops.

"They're being helpful, but I can't tell if this is all they can do, or if they can do more,'' he says. "I feel Mr. Bush will say we're going ahead and meeting deadlines, so that's progress."

Part of the problem in finding a consensus that could satisfy the Sunnis is the violence among a segment of their own population. Sunni voters before last years election were intimidated away from the polls by insurgents, and the US military say there are growing attacks on efforts to register voters in Sunni areas now.

While Sunni leaders have said that if a constitution is pushed through, they'll mobilize Sunni voters to reject it, that may be easier said then done. If two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces reject the constitution in a referendum scheduled for October, it will be scrapped, and Sunnis are dominant in four provinces. But if the resistance prevents Sunnis from going to the polls at all, they won't be able to vote down an unsatisfactory constitution.

"We'll appeal to the resistance to let our people vote,'' says Shakr al-Falluji, a Sunni on the drafting committee. "Hopefully they'll listen."

White, now an adjunct scholar at the Middle East institute in Washington, says that's a tough proposition.

"It will be very difficult for Sunni Arab negotiators to accept even some of the compromise language currently on the table because agreeing to anything less than something close to their original demands makes them even more likely to be targeted by insurgents for assassination,'' he says. "The most vicious Sunni Arab insurgents are threatening Sunni Arabs who want to register to vote in the October referendum, making it harder for Sunni Arabs to employ the one political weapon they have left."