Iraq's Governing Council was due to sign the transitional law which will govern Iraq from early 2005 yesterday, as US forces hunted the man they say is behind the deadliest attacks since former president Saddam Hussein's fall.
The law was expected to be signed by the 25-member US-appointed council at 4pm, in a ceremony delayed by two days because of national mourning for at least 181 people killed in attacks on Tuesday.
The US military says al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the prime suspect in the attacks in Baghdad and Kerbala, which targeted Shiites marking a religious holiday.
The commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, General John Abizaid, said on Thursday that Zarqawi, who the US says wants to start an Iraqi civil war, was in Iraq and the target of an intense manhunt.
Other senior US officials have said there is no solid evidence linking Zarqawi to the attacks, but that their sophistication and the scale of the damage bear the hallmark of a well-organized foreign terrorist network.
"He's somewhere in Iraq," Abizaid said in a television interview. "We're looking for him hard and we've found quite a few of his operatives ... and we've uncovered an awful lot of the work that he's doing."
The head of Iraq's Governing Council said the US authorities should have done more to prevent the wave of suicide attacks and bombs that left body parts scattered around Baghdad and Kerbala's holy shrines.
"I put the blame on the authorities," Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum said on Thursday. "The coalition forces are part of the authorities and they are in charge of maintaining security, so they should do all that they can to maintain security."
The top Shiite cleric in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has huge influence among the country's majority Shiites, has also blamed the US for failing to protect the country it is occupying.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday neither his troops nor Iraqi security forces could completely protect Iraqis from devastating attacks like Tuesday's.
"It's impossible for anyone -- an Iraqi security force, a US security force, a coalition security force -- to defend at every place against every conceivable technique at every moment of the day or night," Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon.
There were a series of explosions in Baghdad yesterday hours before the signing of the transitional constitution.
The US military said there were six or seven blasts at Baghdad international airport, where there is a major US base. There were no reports of damage or injuries.
Police in the Ameriyah district in the west of the capital said a small roadside bomb had been detonated, leaving a crater but causing no casualties.
At least eight people were killed on Thursday, three in a rocket attack in Baghdad and five in Mosul by US soldiers who opened fire on Iraqis trying to hijack a Turkish truck.
US military officials have stressed that while sovereignty will be handed over mid-year, US and coalition forces will continue to be responsible for security.
The transitional law, agreed upon after marathon talks last weekend, gives details on how Iraq will be governed after polls for a transitional assembly due to be held by Jan. 31, 2005.
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