Iraqi elections delayed

2004-02-21 11:40

Dubai - The US civil administrator, Paul Bremer, says it will be impossible to organise elections in Iraq for at least another year.

He told the Al-Arabiya television station in an interview that the main problem was technical and this problem would take time... "a year or 15 months."

Bremer noted the absence in Iraq of voter lists or legislation covering elections and political parties as, he said, a visiting UN team highlighted last week.

"These are major technical difficulties which are an obstacle to elections and make it impossible," to hold them.

Shiites, who contest US plans to hand power over to an authority that wasn't elected later this year, have demanded to know when national polls will finally be held after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recommended on Thursday that elections be put off and a caretaker regime selected for the short term.

US officials have long argued that widespread insecurity and a lack of electoral infrastructure prevented early elections in Iraq after President Saddam Hussein was toppled in April last year.

- AFP