Word: sistani
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...Free Elections for Iraq Your article "Dealing with the Cleric" reported on the objections of Iraq's Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani to the U.S. plan to turn over control of Iraq by June 30 to a transitional government chosen by a caucus system rather than by direct elections [Feb. 2]. One thing seems clear: President George W. Bush started a war that has claimed hundreds of American lives, and now he wants to have a nice, friendly handover of governance just in time for the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, the Iraqis lose out on having a true democracy, something...
...Bremer's political headache began when he lost a standoff with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, who insisted that a new Iraqi government must be directly elected rather than selected at caucuses under U.S. control. By demonstrating the overwhelming support for his position on the streets, Sistani won over a majority of the Governing Council and forced Bremer to bring in the United Nations to rule on the viability of elections - and in the process, the Shiite leader appears to have succeeded in giving the writ of the UN greater weight than...
...Handing over power to even a modified version of the IGC is a high-risk strategy, unless it has Sistani's blessing. The caucus plan was adopted precisely because of the IGC's lack of legitimacy, and its internal paralysis that resulted partly from the clash of competing political-ethnic interests. Expanding the IGC could exacerbate such tensions, as each of the ethnic communities currently represented on the Council is already demanding a greater voice...
...open questions. Right now, the old plan (three months old, to be precise) appears to be redundant, but there is no sign yet of any new one. Nor is it clear, yet, what the respective roles of the Bush administration, the United Nations, the Iraqi Governing Council and Ayatollah Sistani might be in formulating...
...factions could accept. A U.N. team arrived in Iraq last week to evaluate the coalition's plans for transition and assess the feasibility of holding broad-based elections before the June 30 deadline. The elections have been demanded by Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, but are resisted by U.S. officials, who say a general vote cannot be held safely. The intrigue deepened last Thursday when Sistani's bodyguards said the cleric had escaped an assassination attempt outside his home in Najaf. Sistani aides later told U.S. military officials that accounts of the purported attack...