By DEXTER FILKINS and ROBERT F. WORTH - September 2, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 28 - Iraqi leaders presented a disputed constitution to the country's parliament on Sunday, overriding the objections of Sunni negotiators, sending the document to voters and setting the stage here for a protracted period of political conflict.

[September 4, 2005] A group of nationalist Turks attacked dozens of buses carrying pro-Kurdish demonstrators with stones on Sunday, following violent clashes between Kurdish demonstrators and police in Istanbul, reports said.

ISTANBUL, Sept 4 (AFP) - 17h40 - Turkish police on Sunday detained 88 people and used truncheons and tear gas against Kurdish activists who protested after they were barred from attending a planned demonstration in favour of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, media reports said.
Footage broadcast on CNN-Turk news channel showed protestors -- some of whom had covered their faces with Palestinian-style checkered kaffiyehs -- hurling incendiary devices at shops and in the streets in the Alibeykoy district in the city's European side.

TEHRAN, Sept 3 (AFP) - 10h48 - Clashes in western Iran with Kurdish rebels have left 120 Iranian police dead and a further 64 injured in less than six months, a provincial judiciary chief was quoted as saying Saturday.
"Since the beginning of the year 1384 (beginning March 20, 2005), 120 police have been martyred and 64 injured fighting the Pejak, PKK, Kurdish Democratic Party and Komoleh," Hojatoleslam Akbar Feyz, the head of Western Azebaijan province judiciary, told the student news agency ISNA.

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq, Aug 30 (AFP) - 12h02 - The chief judge trying ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has arrived in northern Iraq's Kurdish-controlled zone to gather criminal evidence against the former dictator, a Kurdish official said Tuesday.

By James Dobbins International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 2005

WASHINGTON The last time American diplomats locked a group of prospective founding fathers in a room with orders not to come out until they had a constitution was a decade ago, in Dayton, Ohio. The founding fathers in question represented Bosnia's Muslim, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities.

ANKARA, Aug 28 (AFP) - 22h00 - A young man died in hospital after being shot during clashes Sunday, in southeastern Turkey, between police and demonstrators trying to claim the bodies of six Kurdish separatist rebels killed in fighting earlier this week, the Anatolia news agency reported.

TEXT OF THE DRAFT IRAQI CONSTITUTION

Thousands of Sunni Muslims have demonstrated in the Iraqi city of Baquba to protest against the draft constitution being debated in Baghdad.

Some carried pictures of Iraq's Sunni former leader, Saddam Hussein.

BAGHDAD, Aug 27 (AFP) - 15h19 - Iraq's Sunnis on Saturday were holding out against a draft constitution deal thrashed out by the Shiites and the Kurds, offering their own proposals for the new charter just a day before it goes to parliament for approval.

Aug. 26 (Bloomberg.com) -- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's pledge to give more rights to the Kurdish minority has reignited the debate over what the government should do to end insurgent attacks and appease the European Union.