UN first wants Iraqis to determine new government

10.00am - By EVELYN LEOPOLD

NEW YORK - The United Nations says elections in Iraq are not feasible before the US occupation ends on June 30 and that Iraqis themselves should determine the shape of a caretaker government.

However, UN officials said today the world body, which the United States is trying to re-engage in efforts to stabilise the country, would send an envoy to Iraq again if Iraqis could not settle on an interim government to rule until elections can be held.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters that "elections cannot be held before the end of June, that the June 30 date for the handover of sovereignty must be respected, and that we need to find a mechanism to create the caretaker government and then prepare the elections sometime later in the future."

Original US plans for the handover, which involved regional caucuses choosing an assembly that would select a government, were derailed after a leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric demanded early direct elections.

The White House then asked the United Nations to come up with proposals for Iraq's political future. Annan withdrew UN staff from Iraq after their offices were bombed last summer and he has been reluctant to return.

The UN assessment, which diplomats said changed in the past 24 hours puts the onus back on the Iraqis, working with US administrators in Baghdad, to come up with a solution to meet the June 30 deadline and at the same time create a credible representative Iraqi body without elections.

However, UN diplomats believe the world body will have to step in again and that prominent Iraqis will invite Annan's senior envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi to go to Iraq again.

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, has just returned from a trip to Baghdad to assess the situation.

Asked if Brahimi would return next month, Annan said, "We will stay involved ... There is a lot that has to be done and the UN will continue to assist."

Details of the UN position on elections will be contained in a report delivered next week, along with a timeframe for when elections should be held for a permanent government, probably late this year or early in 2005.

Several hours before Annan spoke, a roadside bomb killed two US soldiers and an Iraqi west of Baghdad in the latest of a series of guerrilla attacks that have made February the bloodiest month in Iraq since the war.

The attack, in the town of Khalidiyah, 60km west of Baghdad, brought to 378 the number of American soldiers killed in combat since the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein started 11 months ago.

Finding consensus among the Iraqi leaders on a new form of government will not be easy.

The majority Shi'ites, who have been pressing for early direct elections, will make strong demands. Minority Sunnis, who watched their privileges disappear when Saddam Hussein was toppled in April, fear being marginalised. The Kurds in the north are pushing for autonomy and want a federal state.

Annan set out the UN position in meetings with 46 interested governments and the 15 Security Council members.

The most favoured and easiest approach for an interim government is to expand the US-selected 25-member Iraqi Governing Council by about 75 to 100 people and then have this group choose an interim government, diplomats said.

UN officials said the problem still remained of who would choose the members of the council so they would not be tainted by the occupation authorities in the eyes of Iraqis.

An Iraqi Shi'ite official said after talks with the country's top ayatollah that it was acceptable to delay elections by up to three months beyond the handover of power by US-led occupation administration. But UN and US officials say it will take at least eight months.

"There is no problem for any transitional body to assume power and prepare for elections on condition that it will be held before October 1, 2004," Ahmed Shaker al-Barrak, a member of the Governing Council, told reporters after talks with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq