UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday he hoped to report this week on a plan to transfer power from US-led occupation authorities to Iraqis.
UN officials have said elections, as preferred by Iraqi Shiite leaders, are not possible by the June 30 handover date and that a US-proposed system of selecting an assembly by caucuses was also not feasible.
UN officials also do not believe it wise to push back the June 30 date, set by Washington, as it struggles to contain attacks by anti-US groups. And they say the hope is that elections for a permanent government could be held at the end of this year or early in 2005.
Annan therefore has to recommend other options for a transfer of power before June, which could range from expanding the current Iraqi Governing Council to forming a new body, such as delegates to a conference on devising fundamental laws.
Asked when he would be able to complete the report, Annan said: "I will be able to do that before I travel," a reference to a trip to Japan on Friday.
"I hope we will be able to help break the impasse and steer things in the right direction," Annan said.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Bush administration was open to recommendations from the UN but was sticking to the July 1 deadline.
"We still believe that June 30 [is the] appropriate time to have a transition to an interim government of the people of Iraq," Powell said.
"We've got an open mind on it," he said, referring to Annan's report.
Powell also said no one believed elections were possible by June but said polls could be held at the end of this year or sometime next year.
Annan's special adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, spent a week in Iraq studying the possibility of holding elections or coming up with an alternative.
He was expected to return to New York late yesterday having visited Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to consult regional leaders.
Brahimi has already said that organizing elections by June 30 would pose major difficulties in the current security climate.
He said the demand for a quick election was legitimate but that holding a credible poll was also important.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS