With the deadline less than 36 hours away, Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups remained at odds this afternoon over a draft constitution, despite urgent efforts by US diplomats to broker a deal.
The interim government conceded new elections might be one way forward - that, or put back the deadline of midnight tomorrow Iraqi time (8pm Irish time) for a second time.
"What happens if the constitution is not finished on the deadline they have set?" Laith Kubba, spokesman for Shia Islamist Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, told a news briefing.
"They have two options: the TAL (interim constitution) can be extended for another week ...; or if there was no extension and they didn't hand in a draft ... the National Assembly would be dissolved and the government becomes a caretaker government."
The legislature - elected in January under a timetable laid down in the US-sponsored transitional Administrative Law (TAL) - last Monday voted unanimously to extend the August 15th deadline for completion of a draft constitution by a week to August 22nd.
Failure to meet the new deadline could provoke new elections and, effectively, a return to the drawing board for the entire constitutional process. If a charter is agreed, however, a December election is due to return a parliament with full powers for a full term.
Whether a government formed from such an assembly can quell violence, avert sectarian tensions from turning into civil war and defend itself when U.S. troops start leaving is an open question.
US President George W. Bush - portraying agreement on the constitution as a test to show Iraq's divisions can be bridged and as a way of undermining revolt among the once dominant Sunni Arab minority - has set great store on the deadline being met.
His envoy in Baghdad, ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, forecast after last week's failure that a further week would be enough to overcome an impasse over the extent to which regions would have political autonomy and economic control of Iraq's oil riches.
Today, however, negotiators said they were still stuck on those issues, while secular-minded Kurds were grumbling about apparent US concessions to ruling Shi'ites that they said could turn Iraq into an Islamic state.