U.N. to Send Team to Assess Elections in Iraq

The United Nations decided Friday to send a special team to assess whether elections could be held in Iraq by midyear, and a powerful Shiite Muslim cleric who has demanded a direct vote told his followers to halt the mass demonstrations that have alarmed the U.S.-led occupation authority.

The developments came as pressure grew on the Bush administration to significantly alter the agreement it reached with the Iraqi Governing Council in November to hand over power by June 30. The accord calls for provincial caucuses to choose a national assembly, which would select an interim government. Direct elections would be held in 2005.

One of the most prominent members of the Governing Council delivered a stinging critique of the U.S.-backed transition plan Friday, saying he wanted elections much sooner.

Ahmad Chalabi, long a favorite of Pentagon officials and some key U.S. lawmakers, said in an appearance in Washington: “I believe that elections are possible. Seek to make them possible and they will be possible.”

In Washington, U.S. officials expressed shock that Chalabi had turned against the American-backed plan. “You never bite the hand that feeds you,” said one.

Amid the ferment over Iraq’s future, there were signs that U.S. and Iraqi officials were reconsidering a plan put forward by another member of the Governing Council months ago to expand the body and allow it to arrange for elections later this year.

U.N. officials said Secretary-General Kofi Annan would announce next week his decision to send a team of election experts.

The United States has pushed hard recently for such a mission, hoping that if the U.N. says fair elections cannot be held by midyear for logistical reasons, that would broaden Iraqi support for the U.S. transition plan.

Annan will reserve the right to cancel the mission if the situation is deemed too risky or if it appears that U.N. involvement will complicate rather than ease the transition to Iraqi self-rule, officials said.

A U.N. security official and a military liaison arrived in Baghdad on Friday to discuss logistics with U.S. forces. A U.N. security team will follow next week to assess protection needs for the election experts, who will probably head to Baghdad early next month, officials said.

Annan withdrew almost all foreign U.N. staff from Iraq last fall, citing safety concerns after the Aug. 19 bombing of the world body’s headquarters in Baghdad, in which Annan’s special representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and much of Vieira de Mello’s key staff were killed.

The two security officials are the first U.N. staffers to return since the pullout.

At a meeting in New York on Monday, members of the Governing Council, L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, and the Security Council all made it clear they wanted to see the U.N. smooth Iraq’s transition to self-governance.

Iraqi officials -- including representatives of Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani -- asked Annan to dispatch an advisory team to examine the feasibility of elections or alternatives that would bolster a new government’s legitimacy.

Shiites, who were repressed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, make up an estimated 60% of Iraq’s population. Sistani wants to guarantee that they have power in a new government that reflects their numbers.

Annan insists the U.N. won’t endorse any side or mediate between them.

“This is a team of electoral experts to assess the technical requirements for an election, not a team of political people to negotiate with the different factions,” a U.N. official said.

“We don’t want to be caught in the middle.”

At the same time, the Bush administration is intensively courting Annan’s newly named special advisor on conflict prevention, Lakhdar Brahimi, hoping he will sound out Sistani and other political players to find an acceptable compromise between the U.S. plans and the demands for direct elections.

On Thursday, Brahimi met with national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

The Algerian diplomat is said to be resisting the administration’s appeals, but will return to Washington next week for further talks.

“We’ve asked him to a play a more significant role in Iraq,” said a U.S. official. “If he can somehow bridge the role and come up with refinements, we would welcome that.”

In Iraq, Mohammed Baqer Mehri, a spokesman for Sistani, urged the cleric’s followers to halt protests while the United Nations’ mission studies the feasibility of direct elections.

In a televised statement, Mehri said that “because of the positive atmosphere at the United Nations negotiations, we don’t have an interest in such demonstrations now.... We do not want to escalate the situation after the U.N. decision to send a delegation.”

Sistani’s call for a pause in mass demonstrations could provide important help for coalition authorities, who have feared that the situation could lurch out of control.

In Washington, Iraqi officials and diplomats said the search for a compromise had renewed interest in a proposal to create an interim government by appointment, rather than through the complex system of caucuses in Iraq’s 18 provinces.

The appointed interim government plan has been pushed for months by Adnan Pachachi, the onetime Iraqi foreign minister who is currently president of the U.S.-picked Governing Council.

Pachachi argues that the United States could create a representative body by adding perhaps 100 members to the existing 24-member council.

Many of the new additions could be Shiite leaders, and allies of Sistani, to ease the majority group’s concerns that it has too little influence, officials say.

If the caucus proposal and elections are judged unviable, and the White House decides it must return sovereignty before U.S. elections heat up in the summer, Pachachi’s plan could be the default choice, said officials and others familiar with the administration’s thinking.

Officials and analysts noted that Pachachi’s idea had previously been rejected by the U.S. government. And it could be a nonstarter if Sistani is not willing to accept an appointed body, even if it includes a number of his allies.

At the State Department, deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Friday that the administration was still behind the Nov. 15 agreement that calls for caucuses, but is also open to suggestions.

“We continue to look at electoral mechanisms that adhere to the timetable of the Nov. 15 agreement, and we have an open mind about how to most effectively facilitate an orderly transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people within that framework,” he said.

Several observers thought it highly unlikely that Sistani would accept a deal in which the United States gave him a seat on an expanded Governing Council, as Pachachi suggested.

“I don’t think that’s the kind of sop Sistanti would accept,” said Judith Yaphe, a Middle East specialist at National Defense University.

“If you’re demanding elections and you give that up simply because you’re put on the team, that’s a sellout.”

In his criticism of the caucus plan, Chalabi said that leaders chosen by caucus may not be representative of Iraqis, and may not respond to their views.

“It’s also not clear that this process will guarantee the election of strong leaders to sit on the assembly. That, of course, is a sure-fire way to have instability, because such people will not be able to withstand the huge movements that will take place after sovereignty is established,” Chalabi said at the American Enterprise Institute.

At the United Nations, some diplomats interpreted Chalabi’s words as a move intended to build political support among the country’s Shiite majority.

*

Richter reported from Washington and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad and Sonni Efron in Washington contributed to this report.

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In stories after April 9, 2004, Shiite cleric Muqtader Sadr is correctly referred to as Muqtada Sadr.

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