Annan To Oppose Early Elections In Iraq

Annan and his senior envoy Lakhdar Brahimi are scheduled to brief more than 45 interested nations on the feasibility of elections later in the day, followed by a lunch meeting with the 15 U.N. Security Council members, Reuters reported.

The diplomats said Annan and Brahimi would have to discuss further, perhaps for one week, the shape of an Iraqi interim government envisaged to assume sovereignty on June 30.

Annan will probably give a “window” for elections for a permanent legislature and government to be held earlier than the United States had envisioned, such as between late this year and early in 2005, the diplomats added.

Brahimi told a news conference before ending his visit on Friday, February 13, that conducting elections without adequate preparations “could lead to even more disagreements" in the already highly-charged situation in the country.

Annan’s decision is a setback to Iraqi Shiite scholar Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani’s calls for holding direct elections instead of U.S.-selected regional caucuses to select the provisional government.

Sistani reportedly said during Brahimi’s visit to the country that he would accept any mechanism that will represent the Iraqi people.

U.N. officials said there was no question of delaying the June 30 handover of power, important to the Bush administration before the U.S. November presidential election as it struggles to hold back resistance attacks against occupation forces.

In an interview with Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper published on Thursday, Annan said that “there seems to be general acceptance of the fact that it is not going to be possible to arrange an election between now and the end of June”.

"But there will have to be better organized elections later on,” he told the newspaper.

Annan, who is scheduled to fly to Japan on Friday, is not expected to provide a formal set of recommendations on Iraq’s political future until after he returns to New York on February 25, according to U.N. officials.

Alternatives

Among the many options for an interim government to assume sovereignty on June 30 is an expansion of the current U.S.-selected 24-member Iraqi National Council, a favorite proposal in Washington, the diplomats said.

But U.N. officials said the problem still remains of who would choose the members of the council so they would not be tainted by the occupation authorities in the eyes of Iraqis, they told Reuters.

Among the other ideas under consideration, a U.N. official said, is organizing a national conference of tribal, political and religious leaders that reflects Iraq’s disparate population to select a provisional government – similar to Afghanistan ‘s loya jirga.

Dozen Options

State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that there are “at least a dozen, maybe a score,” of ideas for a political transition in play.

“I’m not going to lean towards any particular one or start throwing darts at the list,” he said.

“I think it’s important for us all to remember that we have very similar goals in Iraq. We all want Iraq to have a democracy,” he added.

Washington’s top man in Iraq Paul Bremer has on said Monday, February 16, he will not allow Islam to be the main source of law in Iraq, warning that he could veto the country’s temporary constitution if it did not fit the “American vision“ of democracy.

Besides crafting a detailed blueprint for the political handover, the Bush administration has yet to decide how much power to share with the world body in implementing the plan.

One State Department official voiced concern about the possibility that member nations might call for a Security Council resolution to formally approve a new plan for Iraq’s transition.

"There’s ample opportunity to hijack this in the Security Council and take it down a road we don’t want to see it go," said the official, speaking on the condition that he not be named.

France and Germany, the council’s two toughest critics of the U.S.-led invasion against Iraq, said today that the Security Council should adopt a new resolution.

Germany’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gunter Pleuger, said previous resolutions on postwar Iraq would not be sufficient to reflect the dramatic political changes in Iraq.