BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shiite negotiators have proposed a compromise to the Sunnis and Kurds to break the impasse over the new constitution and called it a final offer, a member of the Shiite committee said today.

"We have given the latest draft and we hope they respond today," Abbas al-Bayati told The Associated Press. "We cannot offer more than that" concerning federalism and efforts to remove top members of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party from government and political posts.

He said the Shiites had proposed that the parliament that will be elected in December should be given the right to issue a law on the mechanism of implementing federalism. He gave no further details.

The constitution provides for a federal state, one in which provinces would have significant powers in contrast to Saddam's regime in which Sunnis dominated a strong central government.

The charter will allow any number of provinces to combine and form a federal state with broader powers. The Sunnis have demanded a limit of three provinces, the number the Kurds have in their self-ruled region in the north. The Sunnis have publicly accepted the continued existence of the Kurdish regional administration within its current boundaries.

But without limits, Sunnis fear not only a giant Shiite state in the south but also future bids by the Kurds to expand their region, as they have demanded. That would leave the Sunnis cut off from Iraq's oil wealth in the north and south.

On the issue of the Baath Party, al-Bayati said it will be up to the next parliament to set a timetable for the work of the Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification. That would presumably involve how long the commission would operate.

He said President Bush telephoned Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim on Thursday and urged "consensus" on the draft constitution.

The Sunnis had insisted that the issue of dividing Iraq into federated regions be deferred until after the parliamentary election in December. Many Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election for the current parliament, which is dominated by the Shiites and Kurds.

Sadoun Zubaydi, a Sunni member of the drafting committee, said the Sunnis would have to see the fine points of the Shiite proposal first. If the proposal does not make concessions on the principle of federalism but only the mechanism, this would not meet Sunni demands.

"Our position is that both the principle and mechanism should be deferred," Zubaydi told the AP. "Our policy is decentralization, but not political federalism with borders, division of resources, etc. That is separatism, not federalism."