In Meetings, Brahimi Says Elections Are Viable Before Date Set by U.S.

BAGHDAD, Feb. 12 -- A senior U.N. envoy has indicated to Iraqi leaders that he believes nationwide, direct elections could be held late this year or early next year, according to several Iraqis who met with the envoy this week.

The envoy, former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi, was dispatched to resolve disagreements among Iraqis over the formation of a transitional government. He has suggested through questions and responses to various proposals that he favors holding elections sooner than the United States has envisaged but not before a planned handover of sovereignty this summer, the Iraqis who met with him said Thursday.

Iraqi and U.S. officials with knowledge of Brahimi's meetings said his strategy could represent a fundamental breakthrough in the political impasse that has so far stalled U.S. efforts to transfer power to Iraqis. "He's attempting to move everyone to the middle ground," one member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council said after talking to Brahimi. "He's trying to get everyone to walk back from their corners."

The Bush administration and leaders of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority oppose elections to select an interim government and instead favor carefully managed regional caucuses. Leaders of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, most notably Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's top religious figure, have rejected the caucus process and insisted on direct elections to choose the interim government before the handover of sovereignty, scheduled for June 30.

At a meeting with a group of Iraqi political leaders this week, Brahimi remarked that "elections are clearly not possible now," according to a person in attendance. The attendee said Brahimi, who is leading a small delegation of U.N. elections specialists on a fact-finding mission in Iraq, then asked, "Could we have elections in eight months from now?"

"It is our sense Brahimi and the United Nations are moving toward elections after the transfer of sovereignty but before the end of the year," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite political party that has called for early elections.

Brahimi held a 21/2-hour meeting Thursday with Sistani in the holy city of Najaf in which the U.N. envoy outlined the challenges of holding elections before June 30, as the ayatollah has urged.

"He explained in great detail to Sistani and his aides the process that is required to organize elections," said Brahimi's spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, who attended the meeting. "You can't really start organizing them until you have a political consensus and the legal framework -- not to mention security."

Fawzi said that after Brahimi "enumerated the tasks that had to be accomplished. . . . It became very clear that it was unlikely that elections could be held before the 30th of June."

Sistani "acknowledged that he had understood the information" but did not indicate whether he would change his position, Fawzi said.

Mowaffak Rubaie, a Governing Council member who is close to Sistani, said the grand ayatollah likely would not object to elections for an interim government later in the year, so long as the caucuses were not held. "I think he will keep quiet about it," Rubaie said of Sistani.

At the United Nations, a spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan said the U.N. leader "understands there is a consensus emerging" for Brahimi's talks. The spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said Annan believes "there is wide agreement that elections must be carefully prepared, and that they must be organized in technical, security and political conditions that give the best chance of producing a result that reflects the wishes of the Iraqi electorate."

Shiite leaders, many of whom were persecuted by former president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government, fear the caucus system will deprive them of control of the interim government. Because Shiites constitute a majority of Iraqis, they contend elections are the best way to ensure they will have influence over the political transition.

Arab and Kurdish Sunni leaders have generally opposed the idea of early elections out of concern that a popularly elected Shiite government would be dominated by conservatives endorsed by religious leaders. Moderate Sunnis, and even some liberal Shiites, worry that such a government might impose sharia, or Islamic law, and roll back women's rights. Sunni leaders say the caucus system would ensure fair representation in the interim government and provide more time for them to organize political parties.

The Bush administration has opposed early elections for many of the same reasons. U.S. officials also contend that it would be impossible to hold elections before June because Iraq lacks adequate security, an election law, voter rolls and polling equipment.

Shiite leaders maintain that those problems are easily surmountable. They say a nationwide database of 27 million names used to distribute monthly food rations could serve as a voter roll. Polling places, they said, will only require guards and locked ballot boxes.

"We don't need elections to be up to European standards," said Abdel-Mehdi, the Shiite political party official. "You have to adjust to the time and place -- and to the demands of the people. The people want elections, and we need respond to that."

The Bush administration's transition plan calls for regional caucuses to be held during the spring to select an interim government that would assume sovereignty by June 30. Elections would be held in March 2005 to select delegates to draft a constitution. Another round of elections would be held in December 2005 to elect a government as outlined in the constitution.

Although Iraqi political leaders agreed to that plan on Nov. 15, Sistani raised objections a few weeks later. By January, most Shiite members on the Governing Council began to insist the American plan would have to be revised.

After Thursday's meeting in Najaf, Brahimi told reporters he supported the ayatollah's demands for elections. But the envoy did not address the issue of when those elections should be held.

Sistani "is insistent on holding the elections, and we are with him on this 100 percent because elections are the best means to enable any people to set up a state that serves their interests," Brahimi said.

Referring to Sistani by an honorific reserved for descendants of the prophet Muhammad, Brahimi said he was "in agreement with the sayyid that these elections should be prepared well and should take place in the best possible conditions so that it would bring the results which the sayyid wants and the people of Iraq and the U.N. want."

Some Sunni leaders who have spoken to Brahimi said they regarded elections at the end of the year to be a workable compromise. "It's not ideal, but it is much better than having them right away," said Hoshyar Zubari, Iraq's foreign minister and a senior leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party.

Brahimi is leading a six-person delegation that includes three elections specialists. The group, which arrived in Baghdad on Saturday, has spent its time in almost non-stop meetings with political, religious and social leaders. The team plans to return to New York early next week. It will then write a report for Annan suggesting alternatives to the Bush administration's transition plan.

Although Brahimi's apparent strategy to accelerate elections may gain approval from Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis, it also poses a new challenge for the Bush administration: How would Iraq be governed between the handover and the election?

Among the ideas under consideration by U.S. and Iraqi officials is a plan to hand sovereignty to the Governing Council, either in its present 25-member form or with additional members. Another option would be to hold a series of modified caucuses or town meetings to select an interim council of 200 to 300 members.

American and Iraqi officials have effectively ruled out delaying the handover of sovereignty, reasoning that it would be politically explosive both in Baghdad and Washington.

U.S. officials in Baghdad are keen to stick with some form of the caucus system to create an interim administration, even if it will be in power for only six months. The officials contend such a process will create a ruling body far more representative than the Governing Council, which they fear could use its powers to aid its own members in the election process. Holding onto caucuses also would allow the Bush administration to "save face by sticking to at least part of the November 15 agreement," an American involved in the political transition said.

But Shiite leaders said any U.S. effort to impose caucuses would be rejected by Sistani and other religious figures. "Instead of wasting time with caucuses, we should focus now on doing what we need to do to hold elections as soon as possible," Rubaie said.

Rubaie said Sistani "would be fine" with having the Governing Council assume sovereignty for a few months until elections are held. "As long," Rubaie said, "as it's not going to be permanent."

With Brahimi's report expected before the end of the month, Bush administration officials in Washington and Baghdad are working on contingency plans to bridge any gap between the handover of sovereignty and an election. Robert Blackwill, a top aide to the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is in Baghdad this week holding meetings with Iraqi leaders about transition strategies.

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