U.N. Offers Sistani Support on Vote but Timing Is Unclear

A team of United Nations election experts met with Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric Thursday and expressed support for his demand for a direct vote to choose a new government. But there was no agreement on how soon elections could be held.

In an example of the violence still roiling Iraq and threatening any voting, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy carrying Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, as he visited the town of Fallouja. Neither Abizaid nor Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, who was also in the convoy, was injured.

Following Thursday’s meeting between U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, officials with the world body indicated that they might be leaning toward recommending national elections but delaying the process until after June 30, the date Washington has set to hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “understands that there is a consensus emerging ... that direct national elections are the best way to establish a parliament and government in Iraq that are fully representative and legitimate,” Fred Eckhard, Annan’s spokesman, said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

“At the same time,” Eckhard added, “there is wide agreement that elections must be carefully prepared, and that they must be organized in technical, security and political conditions that give the best chance of producing a result that reflects the wishes of the Iraqi electorate and thus contributes to long-term peace and stability in Iraq.”

Sistani is protesting a U.S. plan to install by the end of June a transitional government selected by regional caucuses. The caucus system, he argues, would be strongly influenced by the United States and perceived as undemocratic. Tens of thousands of his supporters took to the streets last month to back Sistani’s stance on elections, leading Washington to seek U.N. help to resolve the issue.

After Thursday’s two-hour meeting with Sistani, Brahimi said the cleric was still insisting on the elections but agreed with U.N. officials that voting should be “well prepared.”

“What is encouraging is that I think they want to go toward the rule of law, they want to go toward a government that is representative, and they all agree that this can best be done through elections,” Brahimi said later in a brief interview with CNN. “The question is, when are these elections possible?”

Brahimi will brief Annan fully next week when he returns to New York, after meeting in Kuwait this weekend with the foreign ministers of Egypt and nations bordering Iraq. On Thursday, Brahimi and other U.N. officials did not mention an election timetable, and officials in Sistani’s office declined to comment on the meeting.

In addition to elections, Sistani has demanded that an elected legislature -- rather than the U.S.-chosen Iraqi Governing Council -- approve a temporary constitution still being drawn up. He also wants a status-of-forces agreement that outlines the future role of the American military in Iraq. But the 75-year-old Shiite leader has refused to meet with U.S. officials, including L. Paul Bremer III, head of the U.S.-led occupation administration, to discuss his concerns with them directly.

Shiites are believed to make up at least 60% of Iraq’s 25 million people, but they have long been ruled by Iraq’s minority Sunni Muslim population. Shiites were repressed under Saddam Hussein and are now eager to run the country. They probably would dominate elections, a prospect that worries Sunnis.

Sunni supporters of Hussein’s ousted regime are thought to be leading the campaign of violence against U.S. troops and Iraqis cooperating with the occupation. Foreign militants also have joined the fight.

In Thursday’s attack in Fallouja, west of Baghdad, insurgents fired three rocket-propelled grenades from rooftops at Abizaid’s convoy, but no Americans were killed, Army officials said. It was unclear whether the attackers knew Abizaid was in the convoy.

“Whether we can directly link this attack to any foreknowledge that Gen. Abizaid and Gen. Swannack were going to be there I think is a bit of a leap that we’re not prepared to make at this time,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman.

The military will launch an investigation into the assault, including a review of possible intelligence breaches, he added.

In another attack west of Baghdad, an explosion killed one U.S. soldier on patrol in Abu Ghraib on Thursday night and hurt two others, a military spokesman said, bringing the number of American deaths in the conflict to at least 538.

Meanwhile, the occupation administration said it was planning an effort to inform Iraqis about a letter seeking Al Qaeda’s help in inciting violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

The U.S. military said this week that it had intercepted the letter, believed to have been written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of ties to the terrorist group.

The occupation administration plans to launch an effort to inform Iraqis about “this blueprint for terror in Iraq document, Mr. Zarqawi’s memorandum, his action plan to tear this country apart,” said Dan Senor, a coalition spokesman. The campaign will include posters and bumper stickers citing a $10-million reward for Zarqawi and quoting from the letter.

The U.S. military said Zarqawi was the prime suspect in several terrorist attacks in Iraq.

Rubin and Duhigg reported from Baghdad and Farley from the United Nations.