Two UN security experts arrived in Iraq to study the possible return of international staff as a top Shiite Muslim leader declared that a US-backed plan for handing power to Iraqis was "unacceptable." In more loss to the US forces, two pilots were killed when their helicopter crashed.
A UN military adviser and a security coordinator, who arrived yesterday, planned to meet with officials from the US-led coalition and inspect buildings the world body might use, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said yesterday. Their names have not been released and it is not known how long they will stay in Baghdad.
Separately, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is also considering sending a security team that would be needed if he decides to send experts to Iraq to determine whether direct elections for a transitional government were feasible.
That team would help resolve a dispute between the coalition and Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who is demanding direct elections.
However, a coalition plan calls for letting regional caucuses choose a legislature, which in turn will name a new Iraqi government that will take over from the coalition on July 1.
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite leader, said yesterday the plan "as it stands ... is unacceptable." But Americans and others are slowly coming around to the need for elections, he said.
Al-Hakim, who was among members of a Governing Council delegation who met with President George W. Bush on Tuesday at the White House, heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's most powerful Shiite political group.
He said if the UN experts conclude an early vote is not feasible, then sovereignty could be handed over to the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council. But he added it was "a last-resort option."
Al-Hakim's views carry considerable weight in Iraq, where the Shiite majority has risen to dominate the political scene after decades of suppression by the Sunni Arab minority.
Al-Hakim, a close associate of al-Sistani, said the US plan reached Nov. 15 between US civilian administrator Paul Bremer and the Governing Council, is "complicated."
"It was hurriedly agreed," he said.
The US maintains that it is impossible to hold elections in such a short time given the lack of a census, lack of electoral rolls and the continuing violence by insurgents loyal to Saddam Hussein.
The Bush administration said Friday that it was holding to its July 1 deadline for ending the US occupation but the method of selecting a new government wasn't decided.
"We have an open mind about how to most effectively facilitate an orderly transfer of sovereignty," State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.
Under the US power-transfer plan, Iraqis will also vote early next year to chose delegates who will draft a constitution. The draft will later be adopted in a national referendum. The third and final 2005 vote, under the plan, is to elect a new parliament.
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