Word: sistani
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...even as he blamed foreign extremists, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, also held the U.S. responsible for failing to provide adequate security. Shiite warnings against being provoked into sectarian reprisals against their Sunni countrymen were accompanied by a restatement of the urgency of restoring Iraqi sovereignty...
...indications from Shiite leaders are that Sistani and his supporters will accept interim rule by some version of the IGC, precisely because they envisage its sovereignty and mandate as strictly limited. The primary function of the authority that takes the keys from Bremer on July 1, according to Sistani, is to organize elections by a specified date. It will, in his view, have no business privatizing state industries, doling out oil contracts, concluding treaties or taking any other decisions with long-term consequences. And the Shiite leadership wants the terms of the provisional government's mandate, and a strict timetable...
...took UN special representative Lakhdar Brahimi to convince Shiite leaders that elections can't be held before June 30, for reasons of security and logistics. The U.S. had actually invited the UN in to rule on the election question because Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, would not take no for an answer from Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad. Indeed, it is a measure of the difficulties facing Bremer that Sistani, by far the most popular and influential leader in Iraq today, has steadfastly refused even to meet with any U.S. officials so as to avoid being seen...
...avoid it. The Kurds are digging in their heels and demanding to be recognized as a de facto state within a state. Bremer, forced into an increasingly tricky balancing act, had initially hoped that the Ayatollah's objections could be overcome with some tweaking of the caucus plan, but Sistani brought his supporters out into the streets to make clear that it was a recipe for instability. The deadlock prompted Washington to turn...
...what the Bush administration had in mind, but options are narrow and Sistani has had his way, so far, precisely because of his ability to marshal mass support for positions on the street and to persuade even a majority of the IGC to back his positions. So much so, that it has become an article of faith for U.S. officials in Iraq that for a plan to work, it must have Sistani's blessing, even tacitly...