OPTIMISM ABOUT IRAQ

This story is encouraging...

Four days before Iraqis are to vote on their country's proposed constitution, Shi'ite, Sunni Arab, and Kurdish power brokers reached a breakthrough late yesterday that revived dying hopes of winning Sunni support for the charter and defusing the Sunni-led insurgency by political means, Iraqi political leaders said.

The tentative accord, which would allow the constitution to be changed early next year, was reached through closed-door deals made largely by political party chiefs rather than members of Iraq's constitution committee. A parliamentary leader questioned whether enough time was left for the National Assembly to give it legal approval before the referendum.

But after weeks of stalemate over a draft constitution that largely shut out the demands of Iraq's disempowered Sunni Arab minority and raised fears of even greater sectarian and insurgent violence, some Sunni negotiators accepted yesterday's changes with relief.

''With the changes, I will give my full support to the constitution," said Mishan Jabouri, a Sunni Arab who was involved in negotiations. An opponent of the previous draft, Jabouri earlier had said he stayed in talks only at the coaxing of Middle Eastern diplomats.

''Before now, I felt like I am losing. We are losing our power, we are losing our country, and I am like a foreigner living here," Jabouri said. ''Now everything has changed. This constitution, I think any Arab Sunni can support it."

''I believe the key part of the Sunni community will come on board," said another senior Iraqi official close to the talks. ''We have come very far at the very last minute."

If the Iraqi people turn out in large numbers to vote on the proposed constitution, including the Sunnis, and they approve it, it will be difficult to make the argument that the new constitution and the government created by it is illegitimate. If the Shiite, Kurd and Sunni political leaders can continue to make deals, even backroom deals, without violence, they will have taken a giant step toward the day when the insurgency is defeated, and our troops can come home.