FYI

US CONCESSIONS to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraqi law marked a turn in talks on a constitution, negotiators said yesterday as they raced to meet tomorrow's deadline to clinch a deal.

Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.

But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam the main source of law - a reversal of interim legal arrangements - and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.

"We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state. I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want."

Washington, with 140,000 troops still in Iraq, has insisted Iraqis are free to govern themselves yet made it clear it will not approve the kind of clerical rule seen in Shi'ite Iran, a state US President George Bush describes as "evil".