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Pick an election, any
election
The United Nations has
yet to give its assessment of how the US should hand
over political power to a sovereign Iraqi government,
but UN secretary general Kofi Annan, in an interview
published in Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun on Thursday, said
that he believes that direct elections are essential,
but June 30 is too soon.
Meanwhile, all parties
in the debate over how to form Iraq's future government
say that they will take the UN's opinions into account
before making their next moves. US Secretary of State
Colin Powell said that the US administration had an
"open mind" and would consider the UN recommendations
carefully.
But Powell also indicated that
Washington continues to see caucuses as a central option
to be considered for choosing the coming government. He
remarked: "Is a caucus still the best way to do it or
can the caucus process be refined - or is there some
other procedure that might be used to reflect the will
of the Iraqi people?"
However, if Washington
still wants to press ahead with caucuses, it will not
find much support in Baghdad. Most of the members of the
US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) - which once
agreed with Washington to hold provincial caucuses -
have now withdrawn their backing for the idea.
That crumbling of support began after preeminent
Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani demanded
the holding of full-scale elections before the 30 June
transfer of power. Direct elections to form the
sovereign government would assure a dominant voice for
Iraq's 60 percent Shi'ite majority. By contrast, a
caucus system often provides a way to balance the
interests of competing groups - which in Iraq include
large Sunni and Kurd minorities.
Shi'ite
representatives on the IGC have backed Sistani's call
for elections, but the US has said there is not
sufficient time to organize fair elections before June
30.
Mahmoud Othman, an independent member of the
IGC, tells RFE/RL that numerous approaches are now being
advanced by council members: "Already people talk about
elections, or partial elections, or caucuses. Some
people talk about expanding the IGC [into a sovereign
government]. Some people talk about having a
jirga [council] or a wider conference for Iraqis
inside and outside the IGC [to select or endorse a
sovereign administration]. So these options are
discussed."
But Othman adds that all those who
are advancing proposals recognize that no consensus can
be achieved until the UN makes its recommendations: "We
are waiting for the UN decision, because the UN
delegation was here and met with so many Iraqis. They
took points of view. They listened to everybody, and
then they went back to New York. They are supposed to
give us their opinion in the following two or three
days, so that will also be put into consideration."
Before leaving Iraq last week, special UN envoy
Lakhdar Brahimi warned that hastily arranged elections
risk dividing the country rather than uniting it.
UN officials are reported to favor transferring
power to a sovereign government on June 30 and holding
elections soon afterward. If so, that would be a
compromise between Sistani's demand for elections prior
to the transfer of power and the original US plan to
select the sovereign government now through caucuses and
follow up with general elections some time in 2005.
As the Iraqi parties wait to hear from the UN,
the number of new proposals they are putting forward
increases almost hourly. Some Shi'ite leaders proposed a
plan on Wednesday that calls for immediate elections for
a sovereign government in only those areas of Iraq where
security permits. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, an independent
Shi'ite member of the IGC, said "there are places secure
enough where we can hold elections right now ... Those
places happen to be in the north and in the south".
But key Sunni political leaders immediately
objected to any elections that would exclude the restive
center of Iraq - the so-called Sunni triangle. Adnan
Pachachi, a Sunni member of the IGC, said it "doesn't
make any sense" for only the north and south to vote.
"If the center of Iraq is not involved," he asked, "how
could Iraq be considered a sovereign power?"
An
additional problem with partial elections could be that
the popularly elected members of a government might be
seen as having greater legitimacy than those chosen or
appointed by other means.
Some Shi'ite leaders
said that they would back away from demands for
immediate elections if their community is assured a
majority role in the coming government. Adel Abdel
Mahdi, a senior official of the best organized Shi'ite
political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, said "there are two choices -
elections, or compromises that respect the existing
balances".
Shi'ite representatives currently
hold some 60 percent of the seats on the 25-member IGC.
The Shi'ite demand to respect "existing balances" comes
as some Sunni parties say that they want any expansion
of the IGC into a sovereign government to end the
Shi'ite majority. Hachim al-Hassani, a spokesman for the
Sunni-based Iraqi Islamic Party, said that "expansion
should give equal representation between the Sunnis -
Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans - and the Shi'ites from the
other side". There was no immediate response to his
proposal from the Kurdish and Turkoman parties.
Copyright (c) 2004, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted
with the permission of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut
Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
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