(Republicans don't believe in honest elections here why should they believe in them in Iraq?)
Council In Iraq Resisting AyatollahA majority of Iraq 's U.S.-appointed Governing Council has decided to support an American plan to select a provisional government through regional caucuses despite objections from the country's most powerful Shiite Muslim cleric, according to several council members.
The council's stance, the result of intense lobbying over the past few days by the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, could result in a dramatic showdown with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has insisted that a provisional government be chosen through a national election. If the council persists in supporting the American plan, many in Iraq's Shiite majority, who regard the grand ayatollah as their supreme spiritual authority, may reject the provisional government as illegitimate.
"We are facing a very tense situation, perhaps the most tense since the end of the war," one of the council's Shiite members said. "None of us want a confrontation, but we have to realize we are traveling down a road that could lead to a very big confrontation."
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Bremer had originally wanted a constitution to be drafted -- either by appointees or people selected through caucuses -- before sovereignty was transferred. But his plan was foiled by Sistani, who issued a religious edict over the summer calling for the drafters to be elected. Although Bremer wanted to push forward with his arrangement, council members refused to support it out of fear of crossing Sistani.
Worried that the council might quake again in light of Sistani's most recent pronouncement about elections for the provisional government, Bremer and his staff hit the phones over the weekend and urged members to stay their course. "They were nervous," one source close to the council said of Bremer's team. "They went into high gear."
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