Shi'ite Islamist leaders hammered home demands for an autonomous federal state for their people across oil-rich southern Iraq yesterday, four days before a deadline for agreeing a new constitution.

Minority Sunni Arab leaders, as well as a spokesman for the Shi'ite-led coalition government, rejected the idea and it was unclear whether the split would hold up delivery of a draft text that Washington hopes can help quell the Sunni insurgency.

At an impassioned mass rally in Najaf, heartland of Shi'ite Islam, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) Abdul Aziz al-Hakim turned up the pressure on his opponents from ethnic and religious minorities as the head of his party's military wing derided central government in Baghdad.

"Regarding federalism, we think that it is necessary to form one entire region in the south," said Hakim, leader of the SCIRI, and a powerful force in the coalition that came to power in January's election, secured by US military occupation.

Shi'ites account for about 60 percent of Iraq's people and the issue of autonomy raises major concerns for the country's ability to hold together and for the division of its oil wealth.

Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein, other minorities and secular Shi'ites wary of religious rule have been opposing the idea of a constitution that would allow southern Shi'ites the kind of autonomy now enjoyed de facto by Kurds in the north.

In another development yesterday, a source close to the Iraqi Special Tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein said the trial for him could begin within the next two months.

Ousted in April 2003 after the US-led invasion of Iraq and captured the following December, Saddam is in US custody near Baghdad airport awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

"My best guess is that the trial could begin 45 days from the day the defence looks at the evidence," said a source close to the tribunal.

The source said he believed Saddam's defence team has looked at the documents but that it was up to the Special Tribunal to announce the date for a trial.

(China Daily August 12, 2005)