The stalemate over Iraq’s new constitution has intensified, as lawmakers failed for a third time to reach any agreement on the document. For more than a week, the major division over the constitution has served as a symbol of miscalculation on the part of the Bush administration, which had predicted the document would be done on time. The constitutional debates came to a halt after some senior Shiite leaders said they would bypass their Sunni counterparts, as well as Iraqi lawmakers, and send the document directly to Iraqi voters for their approval. The moves by the Shiites to ignore the Sunnis’ request for changes to the draft sparked threats from the Sunnis that they would urge their people to reject the document when it goes before voters in a national referendum in October. The major division right now centers around the attempts by some powerful Shiite factions to establish a provincial confederation in southern Iraq that would lay special claim to that region’s oil resources, reducing the Sunni Arab share.