U.N. Ready To Assess Iraq Election

"I have come to the conclusion that the U.N. can play a constructive role in helping to find a way out from the current impasse," Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement in Paris.

"As soon as I have been persuaded that the coalition’s provisional authority will take adequate measures to assure security, I will send a mission to Iraq as I have been requested," he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The mission will ascertain the views of a broad spectrum of Iraqi society in the search for alternatives that might be developed to move forward to the formation of a provisional government."

Annan did not say when a team might go to Iraq, stressing that it would depend on getting adequate security.

The U.S.-led occupation authority is facing an uphill opposition from the country’s top Shiite authority Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani to its scheme on appointing an interim parliament to name a government to take over.

At a meeting in New York last week, U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council asked Annan to send a team of experts to Iraq to see if elections were feasible before the June 30 deadline.

Emerging form the meeting, Annan told reporters he was "looking at the possibility of sending a mission to Iraq to offer advice on the ground."

The United Nations pulled its non-Iraqi staff out of Iraq in October2003 because of the deteriorating security situation, following an August 19 attack on the U.N.’s Baghdad headquarters which killed top envoy Sergio Vieira De Mello and 21 others.

Under an American plan, regional bodies created by the occupation authority would handpick a transitional parliament on June30 , which in turn would name a government to take over by June.

The scheme faces fierce opposition from several Iraqi powers, particularly Sistani who insists that free and prompt elections must be organized to allow Iraqis to choose their own government.

Tens of thousands of Shiites took to the streets on Monday, January19 , to support Sistani’s position.

Similar mass demonstration where also organized in the southern city of Basra, with Iraqis chanting "Yes, yes to Sistani; no, no to selection."

A two-man advance team for the United Nations arrived in Baghdad on Friday, January23 , for an initial look at conditions on the ground.