Shiite Says Program Lacks 'Legitimacy'

NAJAF, Iraq, Jan. 22 -- Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, has deemed a U.S. plan for the country's political transition unacceptable in "its totality and its details," a representative said Thursday. The remarks signaled Sistani's refusal to consider revisions that American officials hoped would permit the plan to go forward.

The comments by the spokesman, Mohammed al-Yahya Musawi, represented the reclusive Sistani's most forceful and elaborate rejection yet of the Nov. 15 transition agreement. The depth of the objections suggested a widening gulf between compromises U.S. officials are willing to consider and the demands of a man who is perhaps Iraq's most powerful figure.

Under the plan, regional caucuses would be held across Iraq to choose a transitional assembly in May. That assembly would select a provisional government that would take power by June 30, formally ending the U.S. occupation. But since December, Sistani has insisted instead on direct elections to choose that government, prompting demonstrations by tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Baghdad and Basra, Iraq's largest cities.

In his remarks Thursday, Musawi said Sistani would drop his demand for elections if U.N. and Iraqi experts determined they were not feasible. But he said that shift would be possible only if another plan were adopted. He called the current plan "extremely dangerous."

"If neutral experts come and say that elections are not possible, I will retreat from my position, but on one condition," Musawi quoted Sistani as saying. "Foreign experts and Iraqi specialists should find an alternative."

Given Sistani's influence among Iraq's Shiites, who make up an estimated 60 percent of the country's 25 million people, U.S. officials have worried that his opposition could derail the transition before it gets under way. U.S. officials have asked U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to send a team to Iraq to determine whether elections are practical and, if not, to suggest alternatives. But they have made clear that they are not contemplating wholesale revisions to their plan or a change in this summer's deadline.

In Baghdad, Dan Senor, the chief spokesman for U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, said Thursday that U.S. officials "would consider proposed clarifications" and "proposed elaborations" to their electoral plan.

But, he added, "we are not seriously considering any other options at this point."

The confrontation between the Bush administration and Sistani, who has not appeared in public in nearly a year, has created an enduring irony for the U.S. occupation, with the conservative clergy emerging as the most vocal constituency pressing for democratic elections. Sistani's call has resonated among the long-repressed Shiites, whose gratitude following the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April has given way to mounting frustration over joblessness and to distrust of U.S. plans.

U.S. officials have argued that the June 30 deadline makes elections impractical in a country still beset by violence. Senor said Iraq had not conducted a census in more than 20 years, lacked constituency boundaries and voter rolls, had no laws covering political parties and also lacked the infrastructure needed to "protect the legitimacy and fairness" of elections. Some of the administration's Iraqi allies worry, too, that elections would empower extremist religious and nationalist elements.

Since Sistani's call in December for elections, clerics loyal to him have begun a grass-roots campaign to rally support for his position. The message has emerged in Friday sermons, the clergy's most effective channel of communication. Posters have gone up in Baghdad and cities in southern Iraq detailing Sistani's position. Religious foundations in Najaf have begun circulating pamphlets and leaflets presenting a detailed explanation of the Nov. 15 agreement and Sistani's objections to it.

The campaign was the pretext for Musawi's remarks, which were delivered Thursday to a meeting of about 200 veiled Iraqi women at a community center in Najaf. Musawi, a civil engineer who works in Sistani's office, said the ayatollah's fundamental objection to the U.S. plan was that it provided no means of ensuring the transitional government or the institutions it set up are seen by Iraqis as legitimate. He suggested that lack of legitimacy was one of the driving forces behind the guerrilla campaign in Sunni-dominated central Iraq.

"This illegitimacy forms an obstacle in front of building Iraq," he said.

Under the agreement, the caucuses would be chosen by committees selected from the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and local and provincial bodies set up under the occupation. Because none of those bodies is elected, Musawi said, no decision they reach will have popular support. Without that support, he said, the transitional government would lack the credibility necessary to deal with Iraq's neighbors or with a population still emerging from three decades of dictatorship and the uncertainty generated by the U.S. occupation.

"This is the biggest danger in the agreement," Musawi said. "A transitional government must be built on a sound basis," he said. "If the basis is sound, the future will be sound. If the basis is wrong, then the future will be wrong."

The same objections apply, Musawi said, to a basic law designed to serve until a constitution is ratified in 2005. Sistani has insisted that even that law, which Iraqi officials have said will be completed by the end of next month, must be submitted to a popular vote.

With respect to both the transitional government and the basic law, Musawi said, the ayatollah feared precedents would be set for issues such as federalism that could not be overridden. He suspected there would be too few checks on the interim government's power.

"What is the guarantee that a transitional government will not stay in power for more than a year and a half?" he asked.

Nearly all sides in the dispute have looked to the arrival of the U.N. mission as a crucial moment in the political transition, and Musawi stopped short of outlining what an alternative should look like if the delegation finds elections are not feasible. But he said that Sistani was insisting that the U.N. team's mandate be broad -- Iraqi experts must be included in the process and the study would require extensive grass-roots consultations. Musawi also warned that the clergy would be sensitive to U.S. or British pressure and suggested that Sistani would retain the right to veto any alternative the team proposed.

"We don't need a delegation to come and stay in a hotel in Baghdad and give judgment," Musawi said. "We need them to have a dialogue with national, religious and tribal leaders. They should learn the Iraqi point of view and examine the reality of Iraq."

Correspondent Pamela Constable in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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