Annan spurns early Iraq polls

2004-02-20 11:42

New York - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday ruled out Iraqi elections before a June 30 handover of power, backing the US view, while insisting polls are key to stabililising the war-torn country.

Meanwhile, US overseer Paul Bremer insisted, as did Annan, that the June 30 date was immutable, and said the coalition is obliged to leave behind a democratic government.

Annan, after meeting with envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who recently headed a mission to Iraq to consider calls by the Shi'ite majority for early polls, told reporters the handover date should be kept and that voting earlier was impossible.

"We shared with them our sense of the emerging consensus or understanding that elections cannot be held before the end of June, that the June 30 date for handover of sovereignty must be respected and that we need to find a mechanism to create a caretaker government and then help prepare the elections for later, sometime later in the future," Annan said of a meeting with UN delegations.

The announcement was a boon for the Americans, who faced stiff opposition to the current handover plan from Iraq's leading Shi'ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Sistani got thousands onto the streets to call for immediate elections before the handover but said he would change his mind if the United Nations agreed early polls were not feasible.

Brahimi said "Ayatollah Sistani and I had a very, very good discussion and I think he, like everybody else, realises that the United Nations has no agenda except to help them."

"We were expecting the decision, but we would like the elections to have happened," said a spokesperson for the main Shi'ite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The US-led coalition welcomed Annan's findings.

"The UN has an important role to play here as an independent player, and we are hoping they will play an active role in the months ahead," Bremer told journalists in Baghdad.

Bremer also reiterated his insistence that the temporary fundamental law being prepared by the Governing Council ensure that all Iraqis "stand equally before the law, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of religion and regardless of gender."

He has threatened to use his veto should the Council draft a constitution based mainly on Islamic law, sparking accusations from religious Shi'ites of US interference.

He underlined that the June 30 transfer would not mean in any way that the US presence was ending in Iraq.

"The coalition authority will become America's largest embassy or anybody's anywhere in the world. Thousands of American government officials will be working here with the Iraqi people on reconstruction and on the political process," Bremer said.

- AFP