Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Iraqi lawmakers today plan to vote on a new constitution, paving the way for an October referendum. Leaders of the Sunni Muslim minority have refused to endorse the document, saying it will divide the country along ethnic and religious lines.

The charter, formally submitted to the 275-strong National Assembly on Aug. 22, would replace the country's Transitional Administrative Law, which was put in place a year after the March 2003 U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Members of the constitutional-drafting committee had since May to come up with a document that would unite Iraq and represent the interests of its 26 million people. They stumbled on issues including federalism, the division of natural resources such as oil, and the role of Islam in making laws.

The constitution will be the basis for a new government that the U.S. wants to take a greater role in battling a Sunni-led insurgency, easing pressure on the U.S. military.

Kurds and Shiites swept the Jan. 30 ballot for a parliament and together hold the majority required to push the document through without Sunni approval. That risks energizing militants and may delay the political process as Sunnis have the option of rejecting it in an Oct. 15 referendum, Sajjan Gohel, a security analyst at the London-based Asia Pacific Foundation, said.

``The constitution is seen as critical for the rebuilding of Iraq as a nation as well as the development of civil society and democratic institutions,'' Gohel said. ``It's for this reason that it's essential for there to be consensus. If it can't be resolved it will significantly hamper the rebuilding process and feed into the insurgency.''

Woo Sunnis

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari will hold last-minute talks in a bid to persuade Sunnis to back the document Oct. 15.

Sunnis, who account for 15 to 25 percent of the population, oppose three provisions including a denunciation of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party, an outline of the central government's power and a plan for a federal system for all Iraq that they say they won't agree to.

``We're determined to safeguard the unity of Iraq,'' Adnan al- Dulaimi, a leading Sunni political figure said yesterday at a news conference in the capital, Baghdad, carried live by al-Jazeera television. ``We'll stand, with all our wisdom and strength, against anyone who wants to divide Iraq.''

Article 114 of the draft defines a region as one or more provinces that can choose by referendum to create a larger, more powerful region. The wishes of central government, controlled by Shiites, will still hold sway, according to article 118.

Civil Breakdown

``This is a recipe for civil breakdown even state collapse, the federal system in Iraq has to be territorially, not ethnically, based'' Asia Pacific's Gohel said. ``Otherwise, a socio-political environment may be created in which citizens' commitment to the 'general good' is gradually transferred to the 'good' of the narrower community.''

Protected by a U.S.-led air force, Kurds have lived autonomously in the three northern provinces of Arbil, Duhuk and Sulaymaniyah, known as Kurdistan, since 1991.

They're determined to keep that autonomy and expand it to include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Shiite leader Abd al-Aziz al- Hakim this month said there was a need for a semi-independent Shiite state in the south, which also has oil. That would leave Sunnis with the central and western regions.

The Sunni community isn't alone in its rejection of the constitution. Secular Iraqis, and some Shiites, also fear for the unity of Iraq and say the constitution has provisions in it that may lead to domination by Shiite clerics and harm the rights of women, according to Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University in New York.

Referendum

The constitution may be defeated if it's rejected in the October referendum by two-thirds of the voters in three of 18 provinces, under the interim law. Sunnis form the majority in the western al-Anbar province and in Salahuddin, northwest of Baghdad where Saddam Hussein was born. Many others live in the ethnically divided regions around the northern cities of Mosul and Baquba.

The Pentagon announced it is sending 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Iraq to provide security for the referendum and the subsequent December national elections, the Associated Press reported.

Sunni political and religious leaders say they're doing everything they can to encourage the community to participate and say ``no.'' The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, for example, is handing out flyers and in Fallujah, a Sunni city, imams have told their congregations that it's a religious duty to take part, according to al-Jazeera television.

``This really is a question of to be or not to be for Iraq,'' Columbia's Khalidi said in an interview.

To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at Calexander1@bloomberg.net