MR. BFRY BREAKS DOWN YOUR WORLD

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 25 - Ali Sami's hands were flying around his photocopying machine like a short order cook's. With customers waiting in his small Baghdad copy shop he was not about to pause for anything, especially not a question about Iraq's new draft constitution.

"What constitution are you talking about?" Mr. Sami, a Shiite, said sardonically. "We are fed up with this thing! We would prefer to solve our problems first, such as electricity, water and security. How come they gathered to approve the constitution while Iraqis are slaughtered?"

As Iraq's political leaders met this week in the fortified Green Zone to try to resolve the remaining disputes over the draft, ordinary Iraqis everywhere were of various minds about what it all meant. The drafters turned in an incomplete document to the National Assembly on Monday just before midnight and gave themselves three extra days to finish it, but on Thursday little progress had been made.

At the more hopeful end of the spectrum of opinion, some Iraqis say they view the latest developments as a step toward creating a full and thriving democracy. But for others, caught in a struggle for survival amid war and doubtful public services, all the wrangling over abstract concepts could just as well be happening on Mars.

"What can I do with a constitution if I have no water, gasoline and electricity?" asked Hanan Sahib, 29, a Shiite database operator at a telecommunications company in Baghdad, echoing Mr. Sami's thoughts. The main problem, she added, was security, particularly for women. Iraqi leaders and the Bush administration hope that a constitution with widespread public support will help to legitimize democratic rule and undermine the Sunni-backed insurgency that is trying to topple the government and drive out the United States forces.

In spite of the obvious sectarian divides among the country's political parties, and a sectarian tinge to some of the country's violence, a random sampling of ordinary Iraqis here and in several other cities this week revealed that sentiment about the constitution often does not hew to any such divisions. In fact, many Iraqis say, religious allegiances rarely intrude on everyday life: Shiites marry Sunnis, Muslims shop alongside Christians, everyone waits in the same long lines to get gas and suffers the same power and water shortages.

Some people, when asked about the constitution, expressed particular concern about the very issues that are bedeviling the negotiators, including the role of Islam in the constitution, and federalism. But most seemed to view the process as an abstraction beyond their control and of less immediate importance than the challenge of making it through the day.

"The constitution is good because it represents a new birth and a new life that we have been waiting for," said Muhammad Jasim Kazem, 35, a Shiite building contractor in Baghdad. But amid more pressing concerns, he admitted, he had not had time to follow the process. "Frankly, I have been very busy with the problems of electricity and water, because these things are very necessary for living," he said.

Patience with the current government, led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, has worn thin around the country as violence has worsened and public services have failed to improve significantly. Many people, in fact, say the performance of Iraq's political leaders has done little to encourage faith among a populace that is still reeling from the hardships under Saddam Hussein.

"They are interested in their personal interests only and not in the public interest of Iraq and its people," said Haydar al-Saad, 34, a painter and a Shiite, while eating a snack in a sandwich shop in the southern city of Basra.

"I am not very convinced about what is going on behind the curtains," Shawkat Falih, 40, a Sunni street vendor in Baghdad, said darkly. "The process should be visible and audible to the Iraqi people."

Early Tuesday morning, after the draft was delivered to the National Assembly, some Shiite communities in the south were apparently under the impression that Parliament had agreed on a draft. Television stations broadcast images of people dancing in the streets of the holy city of Najaf, a reaction that confounded others more attuned to the developments.

"I still don't understand why the people celebrated," said Imen Abdul Jalel, 38, a Shiite engineer in Najaf. "The negotiation is still running and they still have no deal."

The Najaf celebrators were not alone in their confusion, however. The missed deadlines have even left some in the political class wondering what is going on and questioning the legality of the process.

But some Iraqis, like Muhammad al-Azawi, 45, the Sunni owner of a busy electrical appliance shop in central Baghdad, saw the disarray as a sign of democracy coming to life, however haltingly.

"As long as the process is ongoing, it is a success to honest Iraqis," he said. "The compass is in the right direction."

Muhammad Hassan, 57, who read the text of the draft in a local newspaper, said it looked as if it provided "enough guarantees to protect human rights," though he acknowledged that some people might fear what he called its "religious spirit."

"Maybe in the future, and after practicing freedom, people can change things," said Mr. Hassan, a Shiite chemical engineer. "We should not be afraid."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Ali Adeeb, Khalid al-Ansary, Thaier Aldaami and Omar Osama from Baghdad, Fakher Haider from Basra, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Kirkuk, Mosul and Najaf.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 25 - Talks over the Iraqi constitution reached a breaking point on Thursday, with a parliamentary session to present the document being canceled and President Bush personally calling one of the country's most powerful Shiite leaders in an effort to broker a last-minute deal.

Mr. Bush intervened when some senior Shiite leaders said they had decided to bypass their Sunni counterparts, as well as Iraqi lawmakers, and send the document directly to Iraqi voters for their approval.

The calls by Shiite leaders to ignore the Sunnis' request for changes to the draft constitution provoked threats from the Sunnis that they would urge their people to reject the document when it goes before voters in a national referendum in October.

At day's end, American officials in Washington declared that the Iraqis had made "substantial and real progress" toward a deal on the constitution. And senior Iraqi leaders said they would make a last-ditch effort on Friday to strike a deal.

But after so many days of fruitless negotiations, some senior political leaders here suggested that time had run out.

"There are still some negotiations, but if we don't have any compromise, then that's it," said Sheik Khalid al-Atiyya, a Shiite negotiator. "We will go to the election to vote on it."

A decision by the Shiites to move ahead without the Sunnis would be a considerable blow to efforts by the Bush administration to bring the leaders of the Sunni minority into the negotiations over the constitution.

Mr. Bush and American officials here have expressed hope that bringing the Sunnis into the drafting of the constitution could help coax them into the political mainstream, and ultimately begin to undercut support for the guerrilla insurgency. The Sunnis largely boycotted the parliamentary elections in January.

In recent weeks, Sunni leaders across north and central Iraq have begun telling their communities to register for and vote in the Oct. 15 referendum on the constitution and in the parliamentary elections scheduled for December. That trend could be endangered if Sunni leaders are not part of a deal on the constitution.

Indeed, the events of Thursday raised the prospect that the Sunnis would try to reject the constitution when it goes before the voters. Under the rules agreed to last year, a two-thirds majority voting against the constitution in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces would send the document down to defeat. The Sunnis are thought to constitute a majority in three provinces.

By Thursday night, Sunni leaders were declaring that they had been victimized by the majority Shiites, and they were already making plans to sink the constitution at the polls.

"We will call on people to say no to this constitution," said Kamal Hamdoun, a Sunni leader who is head of the Iraqi Bar Association. "This constitution was written by the powerful people, not by the people."

"This constitution achieved the ambitions of the people who are in power," he added.

The Sunni leaders adamantly oppose language in the constitution that could allow the Shiites to create a vast autonomous region in the oil-rich southern part of the country. In the current draft, the constitution says each province may form its own federal region and join with others.

In the debate over autonomous regions, the Kurds, who already have one such region in the north, largely stood on the sidelines. But the Sunnis say that such an arrangement could cripple the Iraqi state, and that the Shiite autonomous region would probably fall under the sway of their Shiite-dominated neighbor, Iran.

Despites their protests, there are widespread doubts about the sincerity of the Sunni negotiators. Most of the 15 members of the Sunni negotiating committee were members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and there is a growing sense among Shiite leaders that their primary goal is to block any agreement at all.

In any case, the Shiite leadership has been ardent in its desire to set up a Shiite-dominated autonomous region, particularly Abdul Aziz Hakim, a cleric and the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. As advocated by Mr. Hakim, the Shiite region would comprise nine of Iraq's 18 provinces, nearly half the nation's population and its richest oil fields.

Mr. Hakim and many of the senior members of his group, the Supreme Council, lived for many years in Iran and even fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's. The Supreme Council is suspected by American officials of receiving large amounts of assistance from the Iranian government.

The effort by the Shiites to bypass the Sunnis began Thursday afternoon, when they canceled a meeting of the Iraqi National Assembly, which was set to gather, and possibly vote, on the final draft constitution. While many Iraqi leaders first interpreted that decision as simply a delay, the Shiites made it clear that they were considering bypassing the Assembly altogether and of forgoing any further changes to the document.

Because the majority Shiites dominate the National Assembly, there is little the Sunnis can do to stop them from writing whatever constitution they choose.

The concern that a deal on the constitution was falling apart appeared to have to prompted Mr. Bush to call Mr. Hakim to urge a comprise. One Iraqi official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the Americans, who have already expressed their frustration with the Sunnis, have recently become irritated with what they regard as the stubbornness of the Shiites as well.

"The Americans are very angry that the Shia are not agreeing on this," the Iraqi official said. "They really want them to make these concessions to the Sunnis to keep them on board."

"They think that without keeping the Sunnis on board, many things will go wrong, including the security," the official said.

The other outstanding issue was whether the constitution would contain language banning any remnants or symbols of the Baath Party, which was dominated by Sunnis. The Sunnis are concerned that this may lead to their exclusion from government jobs and that they will be unfairly discriminated against in public life.

While some Iraqi leaders expressed hope that more negotiations would produce a breakthrough, there was also evidence that the more they talked, the more the distance between them grew.

When the negotiations began Thursday morning, Sunnis came in with an ambitious list of demands on issues like federalism and de-Baathification, both of which they ardently oppose and would like to excise from the constitution.

As the day wore on, no breakthrough materialized. "We discussed all the articles that we have a problem with, but we didn't find any solution," said Haseeb Aref, one of the Sunni negotiators.

Meanwhile, some of the Sunnis maintained that after all the missed deadlines, the current government had lost its own legal standing.

Under the language of the interim constitution currently in force, the National Assembly is required to dissolve itself if it does not complete a new constitution by the deadline, unless it amends the constitution. It failed to do either one of those on Thursday.

"The process was illegal," said Kamal Hamdoun, the Sunni member of the committee. "They don't have a right to extend."

At a news briefing late Thursday evening, Hachem al-Hassani, the speaker of the National Assembly, felt compelled to respond to those allegations. He said he believed that the assembly had proceeded strictly according to the law.

As common ground fell away, leaders of the majority Shiites expressed confidence that the Sunnis would fail to muster the necessary two-thirds majority in three provinces to sink the constitution.

Ordinary Sunnis, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a Shiite leader, "do not all have the same views and the same ideas." As a result, he said, opponents of the constitution "will not get 'no' in the referendum."

Mr. Hassani, a secular Sunni who has supported the Shiite leaders, expressed hope that the talks on Friday would produce the compromise that has eluded negotiators so far.

"We think the door is still open to find a solution," Mr. Hassani said.

Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Friday, Aug. 26 - The young Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called on his followers Thursday to end clashes with rival Shiite groups after a night of deadly street battles, and appealed for calm at a time of national political duress.

"I ask the believers to preserve the blood of Muslims and return to their families," Mr. Sadr said at a news conference in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. "Iraq is experiencing a critical phase now during which it needs cooperation."

In a separate development, the Iraqi police on Thursday discovered 36 decomposing bodies in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, an official at the Interior Ministry said. The police said the victims had been handcuffed and executed, but investigators did not suggest a motive.

The Shiite fighting began Wednesday night in Najaf between Mr. Sadr's militia and opponents who were said to include members of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite group. Mr. Sadr said four of his supporters died.

Violence quickly spread to other cities, including the capital, where Sadr militiamen attacked three Badr offices and an office of Dawa, the Shiite party of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Interior Ministry official said.

The Shiite turmoil underscored the animosities that have riven this country, both within and between sects.

Mr. Jaafari, speaking at another news conference, urged the warring parties to "sort out this problem in a civilized way."

Mr. Sadr has been locked in a sometimes violent power struggle with the Supreme Council and, to a lesser extent, Dawa. "It's all to do with who controls the local councils," said Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Mr. Jaafari.

Mr. Sadr has set himself apart from Dawa and the Supreme Council by casting himself as a fiery critic of the American military presence in Iraq, and as one of the staunchest Shiite opponents to strong regional autonomy in the Shiite-dominated south.

Last year, he led two bloody uprisings against American forces, which were suppressed but contributed to his widespread appeal, particularly among poor, disaffected Shiites. In recent months he has suggested that he may enter the political mainstream, though on Thursday he said he had not yet made up his mind "because of the presence of the occupation forces."

In spite of Mr. Sadr's and Mr. Jaafari's conciliatory messages on Thursday, representatives of Mr. Sadr and the Badr Organization publicly traded blame for the violence.

In an apparent continuation of the conflict, a squad of fighters attacked a Baghdad building belonging to the Supreme Council on Thursday evening; several witnesses said the fighters appeared to be members of Mr. Sadr's militia.

Soon after, another group of gunmen that witnesses identified as Badr loyalists arrived in a London-style double-decker bus, the kind also used here as public transportation. The bus-borne gang surrounded the building and captured the first group, hauling it away in the bus.

Early Friday morning, a gun battle broke out in the impoverished Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad, witnesses reported. It was unclear who the combatants were, and efforts to reach the Badr and Sadr organizations for comment were unsuccessful.

Mr. Sadr said at his news conference that he planned to go ahead with nationwide demonstrations on Friday to protest what he called a lack of basic needs, like electricity and water, and he insisted the demonstrations would be peaceful.

In other violence on Thursday, gunmen stormed a house in the Khudra neighborhood of western Baghdad, locked seven members of a family in a room, rigged the home with explosives and detonated them, killing the family, an Interior Ministry official said. Investigators have not determined a motive, the official said.

Two bodyguards of President Jalal Talabani were also killed when insurgents attacked his convoy as it traveled between Kurdistan and Baghdad, the ministry official said. The president was unharmed.

Qais Mizher and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf.