BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's constitution has been adopted despite stiff opposition from the country's disaffected Sunni Arab minority, electoral officials announced amid an upsurge of violence nationwide.
"It is an accomplishment for all Iraqis," commission spokesman Farid Ayyar said Tuesday in announcing the results 10 days after the landmark referendum on a charter that lays down a democratic future for the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
"The results are precise and honest," Ayyar insisted.
Nationwide, 78 percent of Iraqis voted for the constitution, the commission said, while opponents failed to muster a two-thirds majority against in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces which would have meant its rejection.
In the mainly Sunni northern province of Nineveh which held the key to a possible veto, after an overwhelming "no" vote in two other provinces, 55.08 percent voted no.
"It's a civilised step that puts Iraq on the path to democracy, to rebuilding our new Iraq," added Ayyar.
The United States and Britain were among the first to congratulate Iraq on the referendum result.
"It's a landmark day in the history of Iraq," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
Britain hailed the result as a milestone and looked forward to "maximum participation" in elections to be held in two months' time.
"The Iraqi people have shown again their determination to defy the terrorists and take part in the democratic process," said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
But 2.1 million of Iraq's 15.5 million voters nonetheless opposed the constitution, largely a result of fears among Sunni Arabs that it will place too much power in the hands of regions and lead to a break-up of Iraq.
"The referendum led to a split instead of a union," said political science professor Hasan Bazaz.
"There was either manipulation by the electoral commission or there is a really deep chasm in the society," said Abdul Jabbar Ahmed, an international relations professor in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the US death toll in Iraq reportedly hit 2,000 amid a series of shootings and bombings which killed at least 14 Iraqis across the country on Tuesday.
The US network CNN, quoting Pentagon sources, reported that the number of soldiers killed since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq had reached 2,000 with the deaths of two more soldiers.
For the first time, a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war was the "wrong thing to do", according to a poll published in The Wall Street Journal.
Ten people were killed in bombings in the Kurdish stronghold of Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq, while another four were killed in Baghdad, the day after a bombing blitz on hotels for foreign reporters and contractors killed 17 people.
A cement truck packed with explosives was stopped before it reached the Sheraton hotel, and disappeared in a massive flash that sent up a towering column of gray and black smoke.
The blasts rocked Firdus Square, where the statue of ousted president Saddam Hussein was pulled down when US troops marched into Baghdad in April 2003, and shook the Palestine, Sheraton and Sadir hotels.
The Sulaimaniyah attacks targeted a building housing Kurdish peshmerga militiamen and the convoy of a senior Kurdish politician, while security sources also defused a bomb outside a hotel used by journalists.
In Baghdad, four people were killed, including two security officials shot dead in the violent southern neighborhood of Dura.
In the past week, almost 100 people have been killed as the number and strength of attacks surged following the start of Saddam's trial for crimes against humanity last Wednesday.
But US and Iraqi officials hope the constitutional process will lead smoothly to general elections in mid-December and draw Sunni Arabs towards a political solution to end sectarian strife.
Growing calls for foreign troops to leave Iraq, where some soldiers and analysts say they have essentially become insurgent lightning rods, provoked comment by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"We are not going to defeat (terrorism) by getting out of Iraq, or by not taking the steps necessary to make the world more secure," Blair told Sky News television.
Even if political talks remain the best way forward, an influential international think-tank said Tuesday that Iraq remains "very unstable".
"US plans to shift the burden of fighting the insurgency from their own forces to the newly trained Iraqi army have not to date borne dividends," said director John Chipman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"Overall, Iraq continues to be a very unstable country. ... With US plans for indigenisation not making progress, lawlessness and sectarian violence look set to increase," said the head of the London-based group.
In the Wall Street Journal poll, 53 percent of those surveyed said they felt that "taking military action against Iraq was the ... wrong thing to do" against 34 percent who thought it was correct.
Meanwhile, Saddam's lawyer and a team of former foreign leaders supporting the defense called for a UN probe into the murder of an attorney working for one of his co-defendants.
The letter emerged as Saddam's Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi arrived in Amman for talks on coordinating defense strategy for his next court hearing on November 28.
The trial against Saddam and the seven former regime officials over the 1982 massacre of 148 Shiite villagers opened on October 19.
Saddam's defense committee wants to put US President George W. Bush who ordered the US-led invasion of March 2003 in the dock to mirror the Baghdad trial, a Jordanian lawyer said on Tuesday.
