Options for Iraq Trouble Envoy

A special United Nations envoy left Iraq on Friday after signaling that swift, direct elections sought by the nation’s Shiite Muslim majority were impractical and highly unlikely.

But the U.N. troubleshooter, Lakhdar Brahimi, also questioned the U.S. proposal to hold regional caucuses for a transitional national assembly before June 30, the date by which the U.S.-led coalition has promised to hand over sovereignty to a new Iraqi government.

The U.S. plan “needs at the very least to be improved considerably,” said Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who arrived in Baghdad a week ago with a team of U.N. election experts. Asked how the U.S. plan could be improved, Brahimi said, “I don’t know.”

With neither the U.S. nor the Shiite proposal likely to win U.N. endorsement, it seems increasingly clear that the parties will need to choose another plan to bridge the gap. Many Iraqis had been counting on the U.N. to find a compromise to break the deadlock, but Brahimi gave no indication that it would.

Members of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council said several proposals were under consideration, including expanding the membership of the council and having the U.N. play a leadership role in Iraqi government until national elections could be held.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has made it clear that although the world body plans to become more involved in Iraq as soon as possible, staffers will not return until the security situation markedly improves.

Brahimi echoed that sentiment in his Baghdad news conference, saying that even if the U.N. recommended a transition plan, Annan would “demand that some important security measures must be in place for the U.N. to be able to come back.

“The 19th of August is something many of us will never forget,” Brahimi said, referring to the attack on the U.N.’s Baghdad headquarters that killed 22 people and led to the withdrawal of nearly all international staffers. A four-member U.N. security team remains in Baghdad to monitor the security situation on a day-to-day basis.

Brahimi indicated Friday that the request of Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for direct elections to select a national assembly before the June 30 deadline is unrealistic.

At the same time, Brahimi and his five-member team are mulling whether elections can be held by the end of the year, perhaps as early as November, said those who met with the delegation.

Moving ahead on elections will hinge on Iraq’s ability to complete a census, said Maysoon Dumluji, the deputy minister of culture, who is a member of the Iraqi Independent Democratic party. The other prerequisites for an election are somewhat less time-consuming, such as the drafting of an election law.

“Elections are a very complicated process,” Brahimi said, adding that “good preparations” are needed so the results are viewed as legitimate by all parties.

Among other things, Brahimi noted, Iraq has no legal framework to support elections, no voter rolls, and an undefined electoral process. Officials in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority have raised the same concerns.

Shiites, who make up an estimated 60% of the population in Iraq, have pushed for swift elections and are seen as having the votes needed to control the government.

Although Brahimi did not signal any preferred solution to the transition deadlock, one proposal gaining ground would involve enlarging the 24-member Governing Council so that it more fully represents Iraq’s political parties, tribal leaders and religious factions.

“Everybody, and I mean everybody, needs to be represented. The Governing Council is not a private club or an exclusive gathering; whoever has weight in the Iraqi street should be accepted,” said council member Ghazi Ajil Yawar, who is not affiliated with a political party but represents a large tribe based in northern Iraq.

However, it is unclear whether Iraqis will support an expanded Governing Council. There has been broad skepticism about the largely advisory body’s legitimacy and effectiveness, and an expanded council may face the same criticisms.

Another plan would ask the U.N. to supervise the government until elections could be held, though it remained doubtful whether the U.N. would accept such a role because of the security situation.

In his briefing, Brahimi reinforced his general commitment to holding elections, but he also warned that, in the interest of ensuring a speedy process, the first elections might be less than perfect.

“We are now working on the minimum requirements for a reasonably credible election,” he said.

Although some Iraqis, including those close to Sistani, have suggested using food ration cards as a substitute for voter registration documents, Brahimi warned there had been inadequate research into the potential for fraud or misuse.

“These are the ABCs,” he said. “You need to have this done.”

Brahimi said that if elections could be held relatively soon and the powers of a transitional assembly strictly limited, then debate over how to choose the body could be kept to a minimum because Iraqis could be confident that it was a temporary institution.

The U.N. team is expected to present its finding to Annan within the next 10 days. Though Brahimi left the country, a few U.N. representatives stayed to gather additional information about what must be done before elections could be held.

Despite a visit that included meetings with dozens of political and religious leaders in Iraq, among them a rare 2 1/2-hour meeting with the reclusive Sistani, the U.N. team was unable to reach a consensus on how to govern the country between the planned June 30 hand-over and full elections.

“How are we going to create that body? This is the whole problem,” said Hamid Bayati, an official with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite party that favors early elections.

Still, he considered the U.N. team’s visit a success, in large part because it reengaged the world organization in Iraq.

“The best thing about all this is that we managed to get them here,” Bayati said.

Brahimi said the U.N. wants to come back.

“The secretary-general would like to resume as many of our activities as possible,” he said. “So [does] everybody in this country, from what I heard.

“But I think security is important,” he added. “And for the moment, I think a lot of work needs to be done.”

Governing Council member Yawar said the U.N. was reluctant to return if the security situation remained so precarious that its officials would have to live in the so-called Green Zone, the cordoned-off area controlled by the coalition military.

“It would not be a good idea for the U.N. to send its representatives to be locked in the Green Zone,” Yawar said.

U.S. officials in Baghdad declined to comment on the U.N. visit, saying they would wait until the final report was released. But the visit provided an important endorsement of the Americans’ contention that elections were not feasible before June 30.

U.S. officials hope to save their caucus plan and have offered to make modifications.

Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.