T he parliamentary elections in Iraq are not so much the culmination of the political process in that country – as the Bush administration insists on portraying them – as the beginning.

The fact that the voting went so well – a higher turnout than expected, especially in Sunni areas, and with less violence than feared – is a cause for celebration in Washington as well as in Baghdad. It is, as President Bush has said, a watershed for the Muslim Middle East, with its awful, authoritarian history.

But there’s a serious potential downside: The parliament it produced could just as easily become the vehicle for Iraq’s violent disintegration as for its peaceful unification. Everything, it seems, depends on how, or even whether, the new 275-member parliament redrafts the October constitution.

As currently written, the constitution is a design for national disintegration. Its principal thrust is to empower regional interests – Kurds in the north, Shiite Arabs in the south and the once-dominant Sunni Arabs in the center of the country. Few powers are spelled out explicitly for the central government; indeed, the Iraqi army, according to one reading of the constitution, would need permission of the local parliament to operate in that region.

Once the votes are counted and power is apportioned accordingly, it would seem imperative that the new parliament move swiftly to form a government and rewrite the constitution. But that may be no piece of cake. Ethnic and religious differences and sectarian suspicions run deep. The interim slate elected last January took three months just to form a temporary government – and that was without the Sunnis.

Now the Sunnis are in the mix. And if that wasn’t enough to make things even more complex, there’s the inconvenient matter of money. The Kurds and Shiites, each in control of areas of vast oil wealth, are quite happy with the loose federal arrangement envisioned by the constitution. Only the Sunnis, shut off from the country’s oil wealth in Baghdad and the desert heartland of the country, want change – namely a strong central government that will give them access to at least some of that oil money.

A swift rewrite of the constitution, one that keeps disgruntled Sunnis on board, and the speedy formation of a coalition government would be the ideal solution. But forming a government could be a political Rubik’s Cube if the constitutional requirement for a two-thirds majority in parliament isn’t changed. And the uncompromising stance of some of the country’s political leaders is a further complicating factor.

Delay, even long delay, seems inevitable. Trouble is, delay, even in pursuit of a solution fair to all sides, may not be in the best interests of national unity. It would create a vacuum, one that the regional interests that threaten to fragment Iraq would quickly occupy.

Indeed, it has happened already in the Kurdish-controlled north. There the Kurdish Democratic Party has signed a deal with a Norwegian company to drill for oil near Kahko. The drilling began last week. Whether the Kurds’ pre-emptive move is legal could be debatable, but it’s hard to see how a new central government as weak as that envisioned in the current constitution could ever regain control of oil policy in the Kurdish area – or anywhere else, for that matter. One constitutional article provides that powers granted the regions cannot be reduced by the central government.

The other factor feeding disintegration fears is the existence of well-armed sectarian and regional militias. The longer it takes to form an effective central government, the stronger these militias are likely to grow and the more difficult it will become for any Iraqi army to suppress or even control them. And this is where satisfying the Sunnis – or at least a majority of their leaders – is critical.

The Sunni heartland is the center of the insurgency, a blend of old Baath Party rejectionists who prospered under Saddam Hussein and jihadists affiliated with al-Qaida’s pan-Arab terrorists. Although only an estimated 20 percent of the Iraqi population, the Sunnis, if effectively shut out of a new Iraq and its oil wealth, would have the greatest incentive to continue the violence and perhaps tip the country into civil war – the nightmare that the Bush administration and the American military fear most.

The Bushies and Saddam’s Sunnis, in short, have something in common after all – a desire for an amended Iraqi constitution each can live with. It’s another of life’s little ironies.