Restated Iraq mission: A credible constitution

Now, it's time for Arm-Twisting, the sequel.

In the past few weeks before Monday's deadline, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad all pressured Iraq's interim government to produce a constitution. The one-week delay they got instead is a disappointment but not a disaster.

For public consumption, Dr. Rice said, "This is an Iraqi process, not an American process." Let's hope the administration is less diplomatic in private with Iraqi negotiators. If it is an "Iraqi process," there is considerable U.S. investment in it, including hundreds of billions of dollars spent -- in many cases misspent, as auditors are reporting -- and nearly 2,000 troops lost along with almost 14,000 wounded. Whether that investment has been worth it will depend, in large part, on the substance of Iraq's constitution. Because so much rides on them, those details should be included in the constitution presented to Iraqi voters for ratification.

The disagreements that forced Monday's delay were over serious subjects. Decided the wrong way, they could make a travesty of the administration's restated mission -- after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction -- to establish a liberal democracy in Iraq. Delegates could not agree on the role of Islam. Some want Islamic law to be Iraq's sole source of justice. Some insist that laws governing women's rights -- including marriage, divorce and inheritance -- should be limited to those allowed by her family's religion. Another faction insists that a council of Shiite ayatollahs should be granted independence from the Iraqi government, which would be powerless to interfere with the council's decrees.

Equally serious disagreements involve the rights of Kurds in three northern provinces to secede from Iraq and a proposal by the Shiite majority to form a superstate of nine provinces in the south, where Shiites dominate. Turkey, a NATO member and U.S. ally that has been battling Kurdish separatists, would have a fit if Iraq essentially approved an independent Kurdistan. And there is little doubt that a powerful Shiite entity would form an alliance with Iran; those ties have started to grow. Such a federal division would hand most oil wealth to Kurds and Shiites and leave the minority Sunnis, whom Saddam Hussein favored, without land or resources, creating conditions for civil war.

Faced with possible embarrassment, the Bush administration might prefer a say-nothing constitution that leaves major decisions until after a substantial number of U.S. troops can come home ahead of next year's U.S. congressional elections. That would be a cop-out. There is no guarantee that Iraqis won't alter their constitution after U.S. troops leave. But if they at least begin with a credible document, the U.S. can apply pressure -- continued flow of reconstruction money, for example -- to encourage Iraq to stick with it.

It's an Iraqi process, but it's an American project. The constitution offers the last chance to salvage something from the mistaken decision to invade.