Top Shiite leader demands UN decide on early elections in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031212/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_shiite_elections_un&cid=1514&ncid=1480

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq (news - web sites)'s highest-ranking Shiite cleric, wants the United Nations (news - web sites) to rule if early elections can take place in the country, in a new embarrassment to the US occupation authorities.


Washington, which has decreed a lengthy delay before proper elections are held in 2005, can ill-afford to snub the religious leader of Iraq's majority community.


"Ayatollah Sistani maintains his call for elections in Iraq unless a neutral UN committee, appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), visits Iraq and reaches the conclusion that in the current circumstances it is technically and politically impossible to hold general elections," said interim Governing Council member Muwaffak al-Rubaie.


He met the Shiite leader, who along with three other ayatollahs make up the Shiites' supreme religious authority, at his power base in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday.

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[Ripley]

1. I liked this part...

...in a new embarrassment to the US occupation authorities.

Sounds like a good line for a Dem to use on the campaign trail..."continued embarrassments for the occupying US."


But didn't Bremer and his gang previously ignore the Shiite's when about 10,000 of them marched in the streets a couple of months ago?

As I recall, the next thing that happened was a huge car bomb outside a mosque killing hundreds.

Heads up ayatollahs.