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Iraqis Divided Over U.N. Role in Gov't
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A week after Iraqi leaders put aside their differences and signed an interim constitution, differences have resurfaced. This time it's over what role, if any, the United Nations should play in the search for a government that will take over from the U.S.-led coalition on June 30. Iraqi officials and a source close to the U.S.-sponsored political process said that influential Shiite members of the Governing Council don't want the U.N. team of experts that visited Iraq last month to be invited back to help.
We understand.
They charge that veteran U.N. diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, the team's Algerian leader, toed the U.S. policy line when he decided that elections by June 30, as demanded by the Shiite Muslim clergy, were not feasible for reasons long cited by Washington - no electoral structure, no reliable census and an untenable security situation.

Brahimi's report was compiled after a weeklong visit to Iraq last month by his team of U.N. election experts. "Lakhdar Brahimi has achieved what the United States wanted from him," charged Hamed al-Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the leading Shiite political party. "I don't recall anything agreed that suggests that the U.N. will be invited back to help. It may be just a common presumption."

Opposition by the Shiites, who have 13 of the council's 25 seats, to a U.N. role is countered by the enthusiasm of their Sunni Arab and Kurdish colleagues - each with five seats on the council. The Sunni Arabs and Kurds see the U.N.'s involvement as essential. Their differences are fast evolving into a new political battle that follows bitter wrangling over parts of the interim constitution.

The United States agrees with them, arguing that U.N. participation will give the process legitimacy and possibly head off any objections from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the Shiites' most powerful cleric. Washington is adamant that the June 30 date be respected. Underlining its resolve, it has sent a senior White House official, Ambassador Robert Blackwill of the president's national security staff, to Baghdad to help push the process forward.

On Wednesday, according to the source involved in the political process, Sunni council member and senior statesman Adnan Pachachi presented the council with a draft letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan thanking United Nations for Brahimi's report and citing a clause in the interim constitution that envisages possible "consultation" with the United Nations in the search for an interim government. However, powerful Shiites on the council opposed the letter, forcing Pachachi to withdraw it, the source said on condition of anonymity.
"Don't call us, we'll call you!"
Shiites opposed to a U.N. role are believed to include Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; senior politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari; Ahmad Chalabi, whose strength comes from his close Pentagon connections, and current president Mohammed Bahr al-Ulloum. "I feel that there is coolness from my Shiite colleagues and from his eminence Ayatollah al-Sistani toward the United Nations," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish council member. "They had once been adamant that the U.N. has a role, but it seems that our Shiite brothers feel a sort of disappointment after it said that elections were not feasible before June 30."
Tough luck, Kofi! Now perhaps if you came clean on the Oil-for-Palaces program ...

Posted by: Steve White 2004-03-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=28101