A rchive Date
[ 25-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2369929
U.S. mulls options for Iraq power transition
By ROBIN WRIGHTand ANTHONY SHADID
Washington Post
Jan. 24, 2004, 9:55PM
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has produced a list of possible changes for Iraq's political transition, with some U.S. and British officials acknowledging for the first time that the original plan could even be scrapped altogether if the United States is to pre-empt the growing clamor for elections.
In two rounds of talks at the United Nations and Washington last week, the United States told U.N. representatives that everything is on the table except the June 30 deadline for handing over power to a new Iraqi government, U.N. and U.S. officials said.
"The United States told us that as long as the timetable is respected, they are ready to listen to any suggestion," a senior U.N. official said.
The United States is publicly talking tough about clinging to a "refined" variation of the Nov. 15 accord signed with the Iraqi Governing Council that outlines the terms of a hand-over. The changes could include expanding participation in 18 streamlined caucuses to select representatives for a national assembly, which would then pick a cabinet and head of state, U.S. officials say.
But in private conversations with the United Nations and its coalition partners, the administration has begun to discuss abandoning the complex caucuses outlined in the agreement and even holding partial elections or simply handing over power to an expanded Iraqi Governing Council, an old proposal now back on the table, U.S. and U.N. officials say.
The administration insists there is no sense of panic, despite the mounting opposition to the current U.S. transition plan.
"It's complicated, it's not easy, it's not been done in Iraq before, but we'll get the job done. And as we go through the process, there are bound to be different points of view," said a senior U.S. administration official speaking to reporters after Vice President Dick Cheney's speech in Davos, Switzerland. "I suppose on any given day you look over and say, my gosh, we're on the edge of the abyss here, but I don't think so. I think we're in a hell of a lot better shape than we were before."
Yet in a sign of how much control the United States has lost since the Nov. 15 accord, U.S. officials concede that the most important calculations in ending the political crisis will be the positions of two players excluded from the original agreement: the United Nations and an aging ayatollah who has not left his home in six years.
The U.S.-led coalition needs U.N. help to give the process credibility and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's approval to pull off the transition and make its deadline, U.S. officials say.
Sistani's demand for direct elections of a new government has rapidly gained momentum this month in cities from Baghdad to Najaf and Nasiriyah. On the tan-brick walls of the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala, one of Shiite Islam's two most sacred sites, a leaflet reflects popular sentiment: "All of us are with the supreme religious authority in the demand for conducting elections to choose members of the transitional legislative assembly." The call for elections dominates sermons at Friday prayers, the Muslim Sabbath.
For now, catering to the Shiites has become the main consideration of U.S. strategy, U.S. officials say. Yet each day, the political situation in Iraq gets more complicated.
U.S. officials are concerned about alienating either the powerful Sunni Muslim or Kurdish minorities in their effort to satisfy Sistani, Iraq's most popular Shiite cleric.
The 25 U.S.-picked members of the Governing Council are not united either - or happy with the plan they signed 10 weeks ago. Reflecting the views of several members, one Iraqi official said the Nov. 15 agreement was "hasty and hurried. There was a lot of pressure (from the United States) to sign it," he said.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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