While shaving on Aug. 30, I listened to British Foreign Secreatary Jack Straw on BBC Radio 4’s admirable “Today” program extolling the virtues of Iraq’s proposed constitution. Straw was on his first day back in office after his summer holiday, and he was right to be talking up that constitution, which is remarkable in many ways. British diplomats have been trying to help it along behind the scenes.

It was unfair of the document’s critics to claim it had been written only by American stooges and exiles and it represented an American-Israeli plot.

The 71 members of the drafting committee had been appointed by Iraqis and came from wide political and ethnic backgrounds. The Sunni minority made a big mistake boycotting January’s elections, and would have paid a bigger price if unelected Sunni representatives had not been drafted, sensibly, onto the committee.

It was true that American diplomats, including Zalmay Khalilzad, the newly arrived ambassador, lent heavily on the committee to come up with a draft and were alarmed by the serious disagreements and delays.

Perhaps the Americans were unwise to get so directly involved even producing possible amendments. But they have my sympathy for, as three deadlines were passed, Iraq was plunging even deeper into chaos. The authority of the Shiite-led government of Ibrahim Jaafari was ebbing away and the insurgency seemed to have the tide behind it.

The Americans helped give the whole extremely difficult process the necessary momentum.

There can be no doubt the committee had a very full discussion for weeks while they attempted to chart the future of their country. Many other countries in the region would be only too pleased to have their recently elected representatives deciding on a new constitution. While inevitably press comment focused on the highly contentious sections of this long document, there is much in it that will rightly have a wide measure of support inside and outside Iraq. For example, it is declared that Iraq will be republican, democratic and pluralist with 25 percent of the seats in its Parliament reserved for women. Islam is described as the main source of legislation. Parliament will be re-elected every four years.

The main Sunni objections are over the use of the word “federal” and the treatment of former members of the Baath Party. It had seemed obvious to most observers that Baghdad was always going to lose some of its authority to new regional centers in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. This has been happening, in part, since the Americans seized Baghdad. Exactly where the lines should be drawn will remain a matter of serious debate, and rightly so, for years to come. The United Kingdom is an old country, but Scotland was only given its own Parliament, with carefully limited powers, under the Blair government.

Constitutions have the capacity to be changed if there is sufficient support, so they can take advantage of the new political, economic and social realities.

The problem of membership of the Baath Party has a familiar ring to it in Europe. What was to be done with former Nazis in Germany after 1945?

What was to be done with former members of the Communist Party after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Surely the starting point has to be that a teacher, for example, who became a member of the Baath Party in order to obtain a job and a salary should not be penalized, while an official with an unsavory record should be penalized and perhaps prosecuted? Seniority should be taken into account.

The British Foreign Office is putting it about that some Sunni political leaders broadly welcome the draft constitution, but feel unable to say so in public in the present climate. This may, or may not, be the case. What is clear is that, at present, it looks as if those opposed to the constitution will win a two-thirds majority on Oct. 15 in three of the country’s 18 provinces. This would legally destroy the proposed constitution.

The Sunnis, who represent a fifth of the country, have been the ruling class for centuries including during the British period of control. It has been agreed that in future oil revenues will be equitably distributed throughout the country, according to each region’s population. That is both important to the Sunnis and entirely right.

If the Shiite and the Kurdish leaders lack wisdom and understanding of Sunni problems they will employ their democratic strength to force through the constitution in one way or another in the teeth of Sunni objections. The next phase would then be not so much a civil war but the sort of anarchy and horror that Lebanon experienced.

Can the Shiite leaders in government in Baghdad, aided by considerable sums of American money, make further concessions and ease the pain in the Sunni heartlands?