UNITED NATIONS -- Iraq could hold elections for a new government by the end of the year or early 2005 if preparations were to begin at once, a United Nations envoy said in a report released Monday.\nLakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. secretary-general's envoy to Iraq, said there was broad consensus for a provisional government to be formed by June 30.\nBut his report also declared that the preferred U.S. option -- for a system of regional caucuses to elect the government -- "does not appear to enjoy sufficient support among Iraqis to be a viable option... ."\nThe closest the report gets to a specific recommendation is to say, in the final paragraph of an accompanying annex, that it believed "credible and unifying elections" could be held in January, 2005.\nBrahimi issued the report after he led a seven-member U.N. election team to Iraq earlier this month. At the very least, he said, Iraq would need eight months to prepare credible national elections.\nMoving that quickly would require meeting all conditions for security, reaching an agreement over a set of laws for running the country and setting election rules.\nAccording to the report, a political agreement on setting up the mechanism for writing a constitution could be achieved by May. That would mean, Brahimi reasoned, "elections could be held by the end of this year or shortly thereafter."\nThe United States wants to transfer power to a new interim Iraqi government June 30, with nationwide elections for a directly elected government in 2005. Those plans were thrown into disarray when Shiite clergy demanded the government be chosen by elections before the June 30 deadline.\nThe United Nations ruled last week that an election before July was not feasible, and Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, appears to have grudgingly accepted the U.N. judgment. He still insists on guarantees an election would be held soon.\nThe Brahimi plan strikes a middle ground between the positions of the United States and al-Sistani, declaring, in essence, that neither side's plan was workable.\nThe plan does not make any recommendation on how Iraq can solve that dilemma, but offers U.N. help in future talks. Brahimi notes, however, that the coalition and Iraq's governing council would need to act more quickly on providing security for a return of U.N. workers. Annan pulled all non-Iraqi U.N. workers out of the country last year after devastating suicide bombings at the Baghdad U.N. headquarters.\nThe Brahimi report warned tension over the election process could lead to violence or civil strife and urged all those involved in Iraq's transfer of power -- Iraqis and non-Iraqis -- to quickly agree on issues like security. It calls for an independent electoral commission to be set up immediately.\nAlso Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with the Japanese leader in Tokyo and spoke of the U.N. role in solving problems in Iraq.\n"We both agreed that the electoral issue is extremely important," Annan told reporters after emerging from a session with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
"We need to find a mechanism, working of course with the Iraqis, helping the Iraqis determine a mechanism for establishing an interim or transitional government so that the transfer of power which is anticipated on the 30th of June will go ahead and that we work with them to organize elections in the not-too-distant future."\nAnnan said re-establishing security in Iraq was a key condition for the world body's involvement.\n"The U.N. has always been ready to play its role ... on condition that security will not be an impediment," he said.\nAlso Monday, still another senior Iraqi cleric warned delaying national elections would be a "timebomb that could explode at any minute."\n"Without elections, our national institutions will remain shaken, unrecognized and distrusted by the people," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi al-Modaresi told reporters in the Shiite holy city of Karbala in central Iraq.\nThe uncertainty "makes us fear for the future of Iraq" and the possibility of "civil war," he said.\nAfter decades of oppression by the country's Sunni minority under Saddam, Shiites are eager to translate their numerical superiority into votes, and fear an appointed government might try to postpone elections indefinitely to keep itself in power.
