Thread: Democracy in Iraq--impossible?

U.S. Wants U.N. to Send Team to Iraq to Determine if Elections Feasible


By William Branigin and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 16, 2004; 5:05 PM


The United States, faced with mounting resistance to its transitional plans in Iraq from a leading Shiite Muslim cleric, wants the United Nations to send a team to Iraq to determine whether elections are feasible in the coming months and, if not, to help negotiate a compromise, U.S. and U.N. officials said today.

The request for such a team is to be made Monday when L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, and Adnan Pachachi, the current head of the Iraqi Governing Council, visit U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York. The scheduled meeting will mark the first time that Bremer has appeared at the United Nations since taking over as administrator of the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq last year.

In asking for a U.N. team to be sent to Baghdad, officials said, the Bush administration is signaling that it wants to involve the United Nations in trying to gain support for its transition plans from Shiites led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a leading Shiite cleric and Iraq's most popular religious leader. Sistani has denounced a U.S. plan, endorsed by the Iraqi Governing Council Nov. 15, to convene regional caucuses to select members of a new Iraqi assembly, which in turn would choose a provisional government by a June 30 deadline for the United States to hand over sovereignty to Iraqis.

Sistani wants the new government to be chosen through direct elections, a demand that U.S. officials say is unreasonable because the country has no election law, up-to-date voters lists or experience with democracy enabling it to hold nationwide voting within such a short time frame.

After meeting at the White House this afternoon with Bush and senior aides, Bremer said he hoped the United Nations could play a productive role in Iraq's political transition, including the formulation of a new constitution and the establishment of an electoral system.

"We do think there is a role for the United Nations in this process that I've laid out," he told reporters.

On the question of direct elections sought by some leading Iraqi Shiites, Bremer said he did not think a nationwide vote could be organized in time to meet the deadline for establishing a provisional government.

"It's quite clear that the Iraqi people also are anxious to get sovereignty back, and we're not anxious to extend our period of occupation, as the occupation authority, past June 30th," he said. "So we're intending to stick to the timeline that we've laid out."*

At the same time, Bremer repeated the willingness of U.S. and Iraqi officials to consider tweaking the regional caucus structure they have proposed in order to address the concerns of Sistani and other Iraqi religious leaders.

"We've always said we're willing to consider refinements," Bremer said. He said he did not want to go into "technical details," but that there were "all kinds of ways to organize partial elections and caucuses."

Before the meeting with Bush, the White House indicated it was anxious for the United Nations to return to Iraq to help work out a transition to Iraqi sovereignty, a U.N. role that the Bush administration had previously resisted.

While the United States is continuing to work within the framework of the Nov. 15 agreement, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said today, "obviously there are discussions about ways to refine or improve that agreement." He declined to discuss any specific proposed changes.

In a Dec. 30 letter to Annan, Abdul Aziz Hakim, then president of the Iraqi Governing Council, requested that a U.N. team be sent to Iraq to look into "the possibility of conducting elections for the provisional national assembly." If such elections are not feasible, the letter said, U.S. and Governing Council officials would cooperate with the United Nations to find the best way to choose representatives to the assembly "with the utmost transparency to reflect the real opinion of the Iraqi people."

In sending the letter, Hakim was widely seen as acting on behalf of Sistani. Hakim heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shiite Muslim political party. Shiites make up an estimated 60 percent of the population in Iraq, which long has been dominated politically by Sunni Muslims.

Annan replied in a Jan. 8 letter that "there may not be time to organize free, fair and credible elections for a provisional government within the framework of the 15 November agreement."

U.N. officials said Annan was reluctant to get drawn into negotiations between U.S. authorities and Sistani, and that he wanted the United Nations to have sufficient authority and independence to carry out any eventual role in Iraq.

Lynch reported from the United Nations in New York.


source

________________________________

*I just want you to think about this line because it upset me, wondering if it upset anyone else.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

I mean if America is so bad, why do those people keep trying to come here in the first place? Huh.[/b]

Yes, yes...give me your sheltered, your haggard, your poor and all that feel good stuff. But in a geographical sense, most of our immigrants come from ONE country which just HAPPENS to be right next to us. But that&#39;s been slowing down since all our JOBS go down THERE. Now in an international sense, we don&#39;t see too many Germans and Micks moving to the states anymore because it&#39;s the golden land of opportunity.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

We never should have helped the English in WW1 or WW2. We should have forgiven the Japanese for their act of transgression (sp) on us all those years ago. We should have sat back and waited for the Germans to amass enough forces to make an assualt on our country. We could have rolled over as easy at the French did.[/b]

Don&#39;t take this the wrong way, but neither of those were unilateral assualts on another government. Better examples paralleling the current Iraqi crisis would be Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan--all of which failed.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

Try to remember people, that as fucked up as the whole Iraq thing is, they started this whole mess 12 years ago and we never removed the source of power then.[/b]

Do you mean that *we* started this whole mess...like 20 years ago? Iran-Iraq war where we basically GAVE the power to Saddam in the first place?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

We will rebuild Iraq just as we did Japan and Germany.[/b]

Or like we did Afghanistan, Korea, and Vietnam...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

The people there already have more freedom then they ever knew under Hussein.[/b]

Eh. I really can&#39;t agree. There is no police force, so yes, in a sense SOME people are free, but the rest are scared shitless to even leave their homes. There are no jobs, no services, no infrastructure to speak of whatsoever.

And I&#39;d really like you to take a look at my article explaining how they&#39;d have even less freedom in a democracy.