BAGHDAD, (Reuters):
IRAQI VOTERS have ratified a new U.S.-backed constitution, officials said yesterday, despite opposition in Sunni Arab areas where insurgents are battling the Baghdad government.
Iraq's Electoral Commission, revealing final results from the October 15 referendum, said 79 per cent of voters backed the constitution against 21 per cent opposed in a poll split largely along Iraq's sectarian and ethnic lines.
Several Shi'ite and Kurdish regions voted between 95 and 99 percent "Yes"; in rebellious, Sunni Anbar 97 per cent said "No".
At least one Sunni leader complained of "massive fraud" but U.N. and Iraqi election officials said the vote was fair.
The results came as the U.S. military death toll in Iraq rose to 1,999 - closing on the headline-grabbing 2,000 mark expected to spur new calls for U.S. President George W. Bush to outline an exit strategy for the Iraqi conflict.
Anti-government insurgents, who struck in dramatic fashion on Monday with a triple suicide bomb attack on a Baghdad hotel used by foreign journalists, pressed the offensive yesterday with new bomb blasts in Baghdad and the normally tranquil city of Sulaimaniya, killing at least 11 people in total.
The constitution's final results confirmed that only two of Iraq's 18 provinces, the insurgent stronghold of Anbar in the west and Saddam Hussein's home region of Salahaddin, had mustered a "No" vote of at least two-thirds - one short of the three provinces necessary to veto the measure nationally.
The northern province of Nineveh, thought to represent a third possible "No" due to its large population of Sunni Arabs, ended up with only a 55 per cent of voters rejecting the charter.
