BAGHDAD — Iraq's controversial draft constitution appeared headed toward approval in a nationwide referendum, according to official comments and unofficial early figures, as ballot counting continued Sunday.
With results trickling in to the capital from the provinces, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking on an NBC political affairs show, hailed the high voter turnout, which Iraqi officials said was 61% nationwide. She cited "early reports from the ground" indicating that the constitution would win approval, though she stressed that it was too early to be sure of the result.
Officials in Nineveh province, meanwhile, said a preliminary count of Saturday's vote indicated that the measure would pass in their area, which was widely seen as a must-win battleground for the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab opponents of the charter.
"All indications we are getting, even from those provinces where the vote may swing, are encouraging and positive as for a yes vote for this constitution," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told CNN.
President Bush, speaking at the White House on Sunday after a weekend at Camp David, praised the election as a step toward stability.
"Democracies are peaceful countries," he said. "The vote today in Iraq stands in stark contrast to the attitudes and philosophy and strategy of Al Qaeda and its terrorist friends and killers."
Independent analysts warned, however, that a high turnout in the referendum, in which Iraqis were divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, would not necessarily presage the end of the insurgency and the ongoing violence that have cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis and taken a high toll on American troops, including five U.S. soldiers and a Marine killed in western Iraq on Saturday.
"The road to a political solution is still a long one," said Nathan Brown, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Plenty of future Confederate leaders participated in the American presidential election of 1860."
The constitution was widely supported by the nation's Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds, who together dominate the interim government elected in January. But opposition was widespread and vehement among the nation's Sunni Arabs, who fear its provisions for a federalist system with a weaker central government will leave their region isolated from power and shortchanged on national resources.
