Dialogue intensifies for Iraqi leaders

BAGHDAD -- With only a week until the deadline for a new constitution, Iraqi political leaders launched marathon negotiations yesterday seeking to overcome formidable obstacles blocking agreement on the draft.

Insurgent violence aimed at derailing Iraq's political efforts killed three more American servicemen and at least 13 Iraqi civilians and government employees across the country.

President Jalal Talabani, who hosted a first round of constitution talks at his Baghdad home, expressed optimism that leaders from the Shi'ite, Sunni Arab, and Kurdish communities could reach agreement in time for parliament to approve the charter by the Aug. 15 deadline.

Participants said the 2 1/2-hour meeting produced no breakthroughs, and Sunni Arabs repeated their opposition to transforming Iraq into a federal state, a key demand of the Kurdish minority that wants to protect the self-rule its region has held since 1991.

With divisions deep on such key issues as the role of Islam, federalism, and national identity, Talabani acknowledged that agreement would not come quickly. Some Iraqi politicians said intense American pressure would be required to bring all sides together.

Before the meeting, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad urged all the parties to make compromises so Iraq ''will serve as a democratic model" for the Middle East and ''take its proper place in the international community."

''The United States believes strongly that the Iraqi Constitution should provide equal rights before the law for all Iraqis, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or sect," said a statement Khalilzad issued.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the insurgency in Iraq is losing steam as a political force.

''If you think about how to defeat an insurgency, you defeat it not just militarily but politically," Rice said in an article appearing on Time magazine's website.

In Washington, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said yesterday that the United States might be able to remove up to 30,000 troops from Iraq by next spring, Reuters reported.

The effort to produce a constitution is being accompanied by a sharp rise in violence. The US command said yesterday that two Army soldiers and a Marine died in two bombings the previous day. That brought to 30 the number of US personnel killed this month.

About 1,000 protesters angry with the lack of clean water and electricity clashed with Iraqi police in the southern city of Samawah, where Japanese troops are based. One person was killed and about 60 were injured, police said. The protest was organized by radical Shi'ite clerics demanding that all foreign troops leave the country.

A suicide bomber detonated an empty fuel tanker near a police station in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing at least two people and injuring at least 13, police said.

Three Iraqi soldiers and two Oil Ministry employees also were killed in two separate drive-by shootings in Baghdad.