Word: sistani
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...that could assume power from the CPA by July 2004. Bremer devised a complex caucus system intended to ensure that the rights of the minority Sunnis and Kurds would be protected. But the plan was never accepted by the key political force in the country, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, the religious leader of the majority Shi'ite Muslims. He wanted direct elections in 2004. Bremer at first "tried to roll over him," believing that giving in to the Shi'ites would drive the Kurds and Sunnis away from the political process, perhaps for good, says a coalition official...
...hope is that this government will prove its worthiness and integrity and its firm readiness to perform the mammoth tasks it is burdened with." GRAND AYATULLAH ALI HUSAINI SISTANI, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims, in a restrained endorsement of the newly appointed Iraqi interim government...
...that plan. It became clear to the U.S. military that the violent insurgencies in the Sunni triangle and among the followers of Shiite firebrand Moqtada Sadr were too deeply rooted in their communities to be eradicated by military means. And the unyielding demand for elections by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, who insisted that neither Bremer's occupation authority or any Iraqi government it appointed could legitimately decide on a constitution, eventually forced Bremer and his bosses in Washington to bring in the UN to design a transition plan...
...recent revisions to the transition plan have significantly eroded Paul Bremer's ability to influence the outcome of the process. The latest UN resolution, for example, makes no mention of the Transitional Administrative Law, the interim constitution painstakingly brokered by Bremer. And that's no oversight: Ayatollah Sistani had specifically petitioned the UN to warn against recognizing the document, which he rejects as the work of an occupying authority and therefore as having no legitimate standing. Sistani's objections are not simply to the process by which the interim constitution was adopted; he has forcefully rejected its provision...
...plans to create a new political consensus among Iraqis. Indeed, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi this week specifically called on Sadr to disband his militia and instead compete in the realm of politics and stand for election next year. The same message, no doubt, will have been transmitted by Sistani, who met with Sadr last weekend, signaling the extent to which the upstart firebrand's stature has been enhanced, rather than diminished, by the confrontation with the U.S. in which he lost hundreds of men. The fact that Moqtada Sadr looks likely to be a factor in Iraqi politics long after...