BAGHDAD, Iraq – Shiite Muslim political leaders who had refused to sign the country’s interim constitution said Sunday that they would approve the document without changes today despite concerns voiced by the country’s top cleric.
The reversal appeared to end a deadlock over a U.S.-backed document that is designed to prepare Iraq for self-government and to protect individual rights. Officials of Iraq’s Governing Council said they hoped to convene a signing ceremony today, resurrecting an event that was canceled Friday after five Shiite leaders balked at the last minute.
A few hours after the Shiite leaders announced their willingness to sign, at least seven rockets exploded a block away from the Baghdad conference center where the ceremony is scheduled to occur. Five rockets struck the al-Rashid Hotel, inside the Green Zone, a high-security swath of the capital where thousands of U.S. personnel live and work.
An American contractor was injured in the attack, a military spokesman said.
The Shiite politicians agreed to change their position after meeting with the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf. In refusing to sign the document Friday, the politicians said Sistani had rejected two provisions in the interim constitution, one that would give ethnic Kurds, who make up 20 percent of Iraq’s population, effective veto power over a permanent constitution and another that would establish a single president under the transitional administration.
After Sunday’s meeting, which lasted for about 30 minutes, a top aide to one of the political leaders said Sistani was not happy with the provisions but would not order the politicians to reject the document.
“Sistani has reservations, but it will not constitute an obstacle,” the aide, Mohammed Hussein Bahr Uloum, told reporters in Najaf.
Earlier on Sunday, about 500 U.S. soldiers, backed by tanks and helicopters, raided Baghdad’s biggest dairy processing plant, in the western suburbs of the capital, looking for specific militant suspects. Four people were arrested, battalion commander Lt. Col. Tim Ryan told the Associated Press.
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