Amid tightened security, streets quiet before vote

Thousands of prisoners in detention centers cast the first ballots Thursday.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Hundreds of Iraqi police and army troops fanned out across Baghdad on Thursday, setting up checkpoints and fortifying polling stations with barbed wire and blast barriers two days ahead of a historic constitutional referendum.
From the city's Shiite stronghold of Kazimiyah to its southern approaches in the notorious "Triangle of Death," the capital's usually chaotic traffic was down to a tiny fraction. Many stores didn't bother to open, and others shuttered early ahead of a 10 p.m. curfew.
By nightfall, Baghdad streets were almost emptied of civilians. The large army and police presence, combined with the scarcity of people and vehicles, gave the city a disquieting calm.
Similar security precautions were in place across much of Iraq in anticipation of a spike in attacks by insurgents who want to derail the political process.
Divisions visible
Even with no people on the streets, sharp divisions over the referendum were visible in Baghdad.
Hundreds of posters and banners urging a "yes" vote were plastered on virtually every wall and shop window in the Shiite district of Kazimiyah. Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has ordered his followers to approve the constitution.
In contrast, not a single referendum poster was visible in the Sunni district of Azamiyah, just across the Tigris River.
A banner by the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party urging a "no" vote was removed from where it hung a day earlier outside Azamiyah's Grand Imam mosque. The party changed its stance after Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers agreed Wednesday to several amendments to the document designed to win Sunni Arab support in Saturday's vote.
Still, no new "yes" banner was on display in the district. Many other Sunni Arab parties still oppose the charter.
The first ballots were cast Thursday by thousands of Iraqi prisoners being held at detention centers around the country. Election officials said they did not know whether former President Saddam Hussein voted. His trial on war-crimes charges is scheduled to begin next week.
Presidential teleconference
Meanwhile, it was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday matched his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.
Before he took questions, Bush thanked the soldiers for serving and reassured them that the United States would not pull out of Iraq until the mission was complete.
"So long as I'm the president, we're never going to back down; we're never going to give in; we'll never accept anything less than total victory," Bush said.
He told them twice that the American people were behind them.
"You've got tremendous support here at home," Bush said.