Iraq to take strict poll measures

The text of the constitution has been distributed to food stores

Iraq has announced stringent security measures ahead of next Saturday's referendum on the new constitution.

A four-day national holiday has been declared, borders will be closed and a night-time curfew will be imposed.

Sunni political leaders have called on Iraqis to reject the constitution by all legitimate means.

Diplomats from the Arab League have arrived in Iraq to prepare the ground for a conference on bridging the country's deep divisions.

On Saturday, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa told the BBC he believed it was close to civil war.

"The situation is so tense... a civil war could erupt at any moment although some people would say it is already there," Amr Moussa told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

But Iraq's government said Mr Moussa was "badly informed" and his declarations were "exaggerated".

At a news conference on Sunday, government spokesman Leith Kubba criticised the Arab League for not opening a diplomatic office in Iraq.

In other developments:

• Ninety people have been killed, and 178 arrested, in the latest US-led sweep against insurgents in western Iraq, the government announces

• A suicide car bomb outside a building used by a Shia militia in the southern city of Basra kills two and injures three

• The most senior Shia cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, tells officials in his organisation not to stand in parliamentary elections due in December, or publicly support any candidate.

Fear of splits

The new security measures, announced by Iraq's Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, also include a ban on car travel on the day of the poll, tight security to protect voters against car bombs and suicide bombers on foot, mortar attacks and any other threat.

Similar measures were imposed during the general elections in January.

In the most troubled Sunni areas, the Iraqi army and multi-national forces rather than the Iraqi police will be in charge of security for the referendum.

Regular searches have failed to stop insurgent attacks

Some outlying Sunni areas to the west have been the scene of intensified campaigns against the insurgents by American and Iraqi army forces.

It is hard to see the referendum making headway there where opinion is very much against the current process, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.

Moderate Sunni political leaders ended a meeting in Baghdad on Saturday with a call to Iraqis to reject the constitution by all legitimate means.

They said it would divide the country, rob it of its Arab identity and plunder its wealth.

With most of the Sunni political and religious establishment against the constitution, the fear is that it will divide rather than unite the Iraqi people, our correspondent says.

That fear has brought the Arab League delegation to Baghdad, but their reconciliation bid is not generally seen as enjoying a high chance of success, he says.

Arab governments wield little influence in Iraq but they are concerned that the descent into chaos there could prove unstoppable and that it will have negative repercussions for the whole region.