Two bomb attacks killed nearly 30 Iraqis in the northern town of Tal Afar and in Baghdad yesterday, four days before a referendum on a draft constitution that has divided Iraq's main communities.

A car bomb blew up in a market in Tal Afar, killing at least 24 people and wounding 36, according to Saleh Kadoo, head doctor at the hospital in the town near the Syrian border where Iraqi and US troops launched an offensive on insurgents last month.

A suicide car bomber attacked an Iraqi army convoy in a part of western Baghdad where insurgents are strong, killing five people and wounding 12, an Interior Ministry official said.

In Baghdad, US officials met for a third consecutive day with Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders in a last-ditch effort to win Sunni support before the constitutional vote on October 15.

Few negotiators thought a deal was likely, however. What was at stake were "tweaks" in wording rather than a basic revision of the charter to be put to the voters, one US official said.

Some Sunni Muslim Arab leaders say the constitution will seal their political doom and hand control of the country to the Shi'ite Muslim majority and its Kurdish allies.

Fears among the Sunnis, who make up just 20 per cent of Iraq's population but who dominated the country under Saddam Hussein, lie at the heart of an increasingly bloody insurgency that has killed hundreds of civilians in recent months.

Exit strategy

Washington sees the constitution as a key element of its plan to establish a stable, democratic Iraqi Government, which would allow it to withdraw its 140,00 US soldiers whose deployment in Iraq is increasingly unpopular at home.

Participants have said the talks, led by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, focus on constitutional clauses which would allow Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south to create largely independent regions seen by Sunnis as a recipe for breaking up Iraq and depriving them of oil revenues.

Iraq's chief government spokesman Laith Kubba said the talks indicated how much weight both Baghdad and Washington put on achieving a constitutional consensus.

The United Nations has backed the constitutional process as has the 22-member Arab League.

A league delegation got a direct taste of Iraq's anarchy when gunmen attacked their convoy in western Baghdad on Monday, killing three police escorts but leaving officials unscathed.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said at the weekend that a civil war could erupt in Iraq at any moment.

(China Daily October 12, 2005)