Iraq team faces tight deadline

2004-02-10 11:42

New York - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Monday that his election experts team in Iraq would be in the country for about a week, and stressed that time was short for them to conduct their work.

Annan said he hoped to be able to report his conclusions to the US-led coalition and the Iraqi Governing Council by the end of February after hearing from the team, which arrived in Baghdad on Saturday.

"The work of the team is going extremely well," said Annan, who repeatedly stressed the politically sensitive nature of the work of the group, sent to assess whether elections can be held before the planned June 30 handover of power to Iraqis.

"The issue they are dealing with is much, much more than technical," he explained.

The nine-member UN mission, led by one of Annan's most savvy and respected diplomats, Lakhdar Brahimi, has already met the Governing Council and the US-led coalition.

Annan said it would also meet with influential Shiite Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose calls for direct elections stirred up opposition to the US plan to hand power over to an unelected body on June 30.

But he again left open the possibility that it would be difficult to oppose a delay in the handover if a consensus emerges that the deadline is approaching too quickly to conduct the transfer of power properly.

"If the parties were to agree to other arrangements, I think it would be difficult to reject," Annan said.

- SAPA