BAGHDAD, Aug 16 (Reuters) - In a government building in the heart of the U.S.-protected Green Zone in central Baghdad, Laith Shubbar is plotting how to make Iraqis care about the document its politicians have had so much trouble writing there. After failing to meet a Monday deadline, Iraqi leaders will spend another week trying to finalise a constitution that lays down the rules for how the country's main ethnic and religious groups could live together peaceably under one political system.
But for ordinary Iraqis facing water and electricity shortages, suicide bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and rampant crime, the debate may seem obscure and irrelevant.
Shubbar said he hoped that by Oct. 15, when a referendum on the charter will be held, most will have been persuaded otherwise.
"We are going to link fighting terrorism with voting for the constitution," said Shubbar, head of the Committee for the Promotion of National Dialogue and Popular Participation in the Constitution Drafting.
He spoke from his office, where state television chiefs talk strategies for promoting the new Iraq.
"The more participation there is in the referendum, the faster the political process will move. If you don't vote, it will strengthen the forces of destruction," he said.
Soon his team will head into 150 villages in distant corners of the country to explain the constitution to people who have little idea of what it is.
And a campaign of TV ads will run until voting day on five of the new Iraqi channels operating since the 2003 invasion.
"What protects us from the wasteland? Our constitution!", one advert declares, as young boys morph from abused urchins in a workshop to A-students in ultra-white shirts at a high school.
RAINBOW-COLOURED POSTERS
Posters festooning Baghdad and other cities announce to Iraqis the various wonderful things the constitution can do, from heal their wounds to protect them like a Bedouin tent.
They also show images of mass graves uncovered after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish dead after the 1988 chemical weapon attack on Halabja and children wounded in suicide bomb attacks by mainly Sunni insurgents opposed to the Shi'ite and Kurd-dominated government and its U.S. backers.
The other line of attack in this government campaign that Shubbar says will cost up to 1 million dollars is nationalism -- what he sees as an effort to recreate national identity in a divided nation.
"These nationalist spots on TV do not necessarily mention the constitution as such, but they will encourage nationalism," said the Arabic literature professor who was formerly editor of the daily al-Adala.
"When I was studying in Mosul in 1980 when the Iran-Iraq war began, we never asked each other whether we were Sunni or Shi'ite. We want to bring that back. The sense of national identity is there, but we need to revive it."
He holds up a rainbow coloured poster hot off the press bearing the faded names of Iraq's various religious denominations and ethnicities floating around the bold phrases "I am Iraqi" and "We all belong to Iraq and Iraq belongs to us".
Shubbar's creations are competing with a smaller campaign by the constitutional committee itself, as well as numerous lobby groups whose funding sources are not clear from their ads.
But in a country that has officially done away with the ministries of information common to the Arab world, Shubbar's remit includes gently cajoling the press to write positively.
"We contact writers in the papers and ask academics to write explanatory columns," he said. "You can't influence academics and editors in the way it was done under Saddam, but this is the constitution so we have to do something. It's important."
"We don't want to interfere, we just want to make sure they don't attack or promote any particular party (to the talks). This is a historical moment for Iraq, so they should simply describe the process for people."
