BAGHDAD, 8 March 2004 — Iraq’s Governing Council will sign an interim constitution today without demanding changes to the document, despite the reservations of the country’s foremost Shiite cleric, Shiite politicians said.

Ahead of the planned signing, guerrillas fired 10 rockets at the headquarters of the US-led administration in Baghdad yesterday evening. The blasts echoed across Baghdad but the US Army said there were no serious injuries.

The signing of the constitution, a foundation of the planned handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30, has been repeatedly delayed because of disagreements between Iraq’s religious and ethnic groups over the document.

“We will sign the interim constitution on Monday as it stands,” Mohammed Hussein Bahr Al-Uloom, the son and chief adviser to Mohammed Bahr Al-Uloom, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council, told reporters yesterday.

“We don’t want the rest of the council to fear that the Shiites want to demolish the whole process. We don’t want them to fear that the Shiites are trying to control things.”

Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, had objected to several parts of the document, in particular a clause that effectively gives Kurds, who make up some 20 percent of Iraq’s population, a veto over the permanent charter which will be drawn up after elections next year.

A delegation of Shiite groups on the council traveled to Najaf over the weekend to meet Sistani and other senior clerics to try to overcome the impasse.

They said after the meeting that Sistani had given them the go-ahead to sign the document in spite of his misgivings.

“There are certain articles that the religious circles have reservations about (but) it seems that it will be that way, with no change, but with reservations from those circles as well as from the Kurds,” said Adnan Al-Asadi of the Shiite Dawa party.

The council missed a Feb. 28 deadline to draw up the constitution but announced last Monday it had been agreed.

Iraq’s US governor Paul Bremer said in interviews on US television he was confident it would be signed today.

“We hope that the signing ceremony will happen tomorrow,” he said. “We’ve noted the statement by the current president of the Governing Council that they do intend to sign it tomorrow.”