Word: sistani
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...Shiite Dawa party said that militants would use the Yassin assassination to justify new attacks on the U.S. And Iraqi outrage over Yassin's killing was hardly confined to the "Sunni Triangle" that has nurtured the insurgency against the U.S. and its allies. Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the single most influential leader in Iraq, called on Muslims to unite against Israel, while the more militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr offered the Palestinians "moral and physical support." In an already tense transition process, the extent to which the U.S. is viewed as complicit in an Israeli action...
...dramatic Shi'ite walkout dealt a stinging blow to the Bush Administration's exit strategy and to Bremer, even if the disagreement can soon be smoothed over. Without ever appearing in public or communicating with American officials, Ayatullah Sistani showed just how much power he wields over Iraq's future. During the contentious negotiations to draft the basic law, Shi'ite members would frequently accept a point, then reopen the issue after hearing from Ayatullah Sistani. Now they were playing the same trick in public as a way to gain maximum leverage. But any attempt to revise the disputed clauses...
Ayatullah Sistani first insisted on a speeded-up timetable for elections. Then in December he brushed aside Bremer's scheme to choose interim rulers through a complicated U.S.-run caucus system and demanded immediate elections. Shi'ites, constituting 60% of the population, expect to dominate any vote. After rugged haggling that brought in the U.N. as an intermediary, the U.S. agreed that elections projected for late 2005 would be pushed forward...
Ayatullah Sistani's last-minute objections focused on two clauses in the basic law that give the Kurds what he apparently considers an unreasonable amount of autonomy and power. But those "technical" disputes may have opened up a fundamental struggle for political supremacy. Five of the council's 13 Shi'ite members simply failed to appear for a lunch meeting to ratify the document, and it took hours of cajoling to persuade them even to attend emergency talks well after the public ceremony should have begun. Prominent among the refuseniks was Chalabi, head of the exile Iraqi National Congress...
...take the lead. "They're going to take over the process, and we're going to follow their recommendations," says a Bush aide. The Administration is pinning its hopes on the proven diplomatic skills of U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who finessed the compromise over elections with Ayatullah Sistani last month. Washington is counting on him to pull off another coup by setting up Iraq's post--June 30 political structures. The veteran diplomat has responded with impressive sangfroid. "He's on vacation," says a top U.N. aide. The aide says Brahimi's plan is to ignore American entreaties to impose...