Iraqi council may backtrack on power-transfer plan after objections

By Mariam Fam
The Associated Press

	Dan Senor
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On Nov. 15, the council signed an agreement with officials of the U.S.-led occupation that laid out a plan to elect the Legislature from regional caucuses of U.S.-approved delegates. The assembly would in turn elect a provisional government to take power by July 1.

The council appeared to backtrack after Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim leadership objected to the plan for Iraqi sovereignty. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite leader, demanded last week that the Legislature be elected directly.

Council members agreed yesterday to set up a committee to "discover the best ways to include the Iraqi people in the process of choosing the members of a provisional assembly," said Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, an official who attended the meeting.

Council members agree that "elections are the best way to precisely know the opinion of the Iraqi people, but there are several difficulties," said Sagheer, an aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite Governing Council member. One of the problems in setting up elections is the absence of an accurate census and of voting rolls, he said.

"The members of the Governing Council think that the mechanism proposed by the American administration ... will not work as the way to elect the provisional assembly," Sagheer said. "An election process would be a much better way than what's on the table."

Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for influential council member Ahmed Chalabi, confirmed the council agreed to assess how to transfer power from the occupation authorities to Iraqis, but said no decision had been made on whether to push for elections.

An occupation official said the agreement would stand.

"We intend to honor the agreement we signed," said Dan Senor, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority that oversees Iraq. "We are now working on issues related to the implementation of that process."

The present plan, approved by the council and U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, calls for general elections to be held by March 15, 2005. Prior to that, an interim constitution, a national assembly and a provisional government will all be installed without any direct balloting by the Iraqi people.

The United States has said American troops will stay in Iraq indefinitely after the turnover of power.

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