The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, admitted on Tuesday that Washington was having to rethink its plan to ask unelected committees to choose an interim Iraqi government, which the country’s pre-eminent Shia cleric has opposed as undemocratic.
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s criticism is the second ominous augury in recent weeks for Washington’s hope of achieving a smooth political exit from Iraq.
Kurdish leaders have made it clear they are unwilling to contemplate the prospect of yielding control to a central authority in Baghdad.
A smooth transition this summer is essential for President George Bush if he is going to campaign for re-election on the rightness of his decision to begin a war that has killed 500 US soldiers so far.
That gives Washington precious little time to arrive at a transition plan that is broadly acceptable to Iraqis and will help to ensure that the country does not disintegrate into civil war.
”We don’t have the luxury of time to let them sort things out, and the Iraqis don’t have the patience for it either,” Judith Yaphe of the National Defence University said.
Officials in Washington and Baghdad were believed to be exploring a compromise between the White House’s and the ayatollah’s positions.
”We are looking for a method that will be both legitimate and transparent but also meet the timeline, and I’m sure we will find one,” Bremer told Fox News.
He said a series of public meetings across the country represented a form of democracy in choosing new leaders. But he indicated that there could be changes.
Some analysts believe that Washington may be getting short of options.
David Mack, a US diplomat who has served two stints in Iraq, said: ”They are running out of ideas. They had obviously hoped the people they are working closely with in the Iraqi governing council would be able to exercise more influence than they have in brokering some kind of arrangement.
”It may well be that we will have to bargain away the vested interests of some of the members of the Iraqi governing council plus the cabinet in order to get enough support so it can be legitimate.”
The US-led occupation authority favours the adoption of a complicated system of committees which would put forward representatives for the governing council to approve. That would ensure that Washington controlled the outcome.
The ayatollah insists that there must be national elections and that any agreement for US troops to remain in Iraq must be ratified by an elected Iraqi government.
In his rounds of the morning talk shows Bremer tried to portray the ayatollah’s objections as ”a technical problem”.
But it will be difficult to dismiss the views of a scholar who is the pre-eminent religious leader of Iraq’s Shia majority, or overlook the sweep of his differences with Washington. A previous intervention by Sistani forced Bremer to drop a political plan.
His objections to Washington’s transition plans are fun damental, and he has been consistent in his demand for a more representative government, and for elections.
So far Washington is unwilling to go that far to meet his demands, Bremer saying it would be impractical to hold elections in the next few months.
”At present there’s no electoral commission, there’s no electoral law, there are no political party laws, there’s no census, there’s no voter registration, there are no electoral constituencies,” he told CBS television. ”There are none of the things that you need to conduct a legitimate and effective election here in the next six months.”
Analysts said that Washington recognised the impossibility of proceeding with a plan so comprehensively rejected by a religious authority representing 60% of the population. But it would not want to be seen as surrendering to the Shia’s demands.
Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington said: ”My guess is that there is potential for a compromise solution.
”Instead of local caucuses there could be some kind of locally run elections that have some kind of special rules.”
Another option would be to inject greater scope for popular representation in the caucus system envisaged by Washington, or to conduct a restricted form of elections.
”It seems to me that there should be ways that are halfway between what Sistani wants and what we have been saying.” – Guardian Unlimited Â