Saturday, October 15 2005 11:50 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Baghdad: Iraqis went to the polls today (Oct 15, 2005) to give a 'yes' or 'no' to a new constitution aimed at defining democracy in a nation once ruled by Saddam Hussein and now sharply divided among its Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities.

As the polls opened at 7 a.m. (local time), the capital was eerily quiet under clear blue skies. Iraqi soldiers and police ringed polling stations at schools, and driving was banned to stop suicide car bombings by Sunni-led insurgents determined to wreck the vote. Only a few citizens were seen walking to the schools protected by concrete barriers and barbed wire.

But President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari were shown live on Al-Iraqiya television voting in a hall in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where parliament and the US embassy are based. After putting their paper ballots in white-and-black plastic boxes, both smiled and waved to the public.

"The constitution will pave the way for a national unity," said al-Jafaari. "It is a historical day, and I am optimistic that the Iraqis will say 'yes.'

Farid Ayar, a top official in the Iraqi Independent Electoral Commission, said voting was being conducted at all the country's 6,000 polling stations.

Insurgents had sabotaged power lines Friday night, plunging the Iraqi capital and other nearby regions into darkness, but Government employees working through the night managed to restore electricity in Baghdad before dawn.

The choice of target may suggest that security measures hampered militants from carrying out the sort of devastating bombings against civilians or police that they have unleashed before the vote. Nearly 450 people were killed in the 19 days before the referendum, often by insurgents using suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings.

Iraqis remain deeply divided over the approximately 140-charter draft constitution they were voting on.

The country's Shiite majority, some 60 per cent of its 27 million people, and the Kurds, another 20 per cent, support the charter, which provides them with autonomy in the regions where they are concentrated in the north and south.

Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on followers to go to the polls and back the constitution. A similar call during January parliamentary elections rallied millions of Shiites to vote.

However, the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated the country under Saddam and forms the backbone of the insurgency, widely opposes the draft, convinced its federalist system will eventually tear the country apart into Shiite and Kurdish mini-states in the south and north, leaving Sunnis in an impoverished centre. Many of them feel the document doesn't sufficiently support Iraq's Arab character.

Last-minute amendments in the constitution, adopted on Wednesday, promise Sunnis the chance to try to change the charter more deeply later, prompting one Sunni Arab group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, to support the draft. Most others still reject it, but a split in the Sunni vote may be enough to ensure its passage.