Iraqis Want UN Verdict on Elections

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040121/ts_nm/iraq_dc

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites)'s most influential Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is likely to drop his demand for early elections if the United Nations (news - web sites) concludes they would not be feasible, a Shi'ite political leader said Wednesday.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) is considering sending a team to Iraq at the request of the occupying powers and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to study whether it would be possible to hold a national election in the next few months.


Washington poured scorn on the United Nations for failing to back the war to topple Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and long resisted any role for the organization in postwar Iraq. But it now wants U.N. help to salvage its own plan to transfer sovereignty to Iraqis.


The original plan was for regional caucuses to select a transitional assembly by the end of May, and for this assembly to pick an interim government that would take back sovereignty at the end of June. Full elections would follow in 2005.