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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (35274)	1/16/2004 8:54:22 AM
From: Rick Faurot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Bush, Bremer to Meet on Salvaging Iraq Handover Fri January 16, 2004 08:28 AM ET By Andrew Marshall BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. administrator Paul Bremer holds talks at the White House on Friday on objections by Iraq's most powerful Muslim cleric to Washington's plans for handing back sovereignty to Iraqis without first holding elections. In Tokyo, a team of Japanese soldiers set off for Kuwait on their way to Iraq, where they will be the advance scouting team for a larger force due to deploy in the next month -- Japan's riskiest and most controversial deployment since World War II. Bremer's talks in Washington with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other officials are expected to focus on possible changes to U.S. plans for the handover of power in Iraq. They occur three days before he travels to New York with members of Iraq's U.S.-backed Governing Council to meet U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and ask that the United Nations take a role in the transition. Iraq's most revered Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has refused to support the U.S. plan for regional caucuses to select a transitional assembly which will pick an interim government to take sovereignty by the end of June. Adnan Pachachi, the current president of the Governing Council, would like the United Nations to intervene in the showdown with Sistani. Sistani says the current road map will not produce a legitimate authority acceptable to most Iraqis, and predicts rising political tension and violence if credible, transparent polls are not held soon. Tens of thousands of Sistani's supporters marched through the southern city of Basra to chants of "No to America" on Thursday. An aide to Sistani told Reuters in Kuwait if the cleric formally rejected the plan, Iraqis would not support it. "If (Sistani) issues a fatwa (edict) all the Iraqi people will go out in protest marches and demonstrations against the coalition forces," Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Mohri said. Washington says Iraq is not ready for elections. Iraq's Governing Council has warned that if a sovereign government has to be elected, this could delay the handover of power. Pressure from Iraq's Kurds for control over a wider swathe of northern Iraq has also complicated Washington's plans. "BACK-PEDALLING" Washington, which went to war in Iraq without the backing of most of the Security Council, long resisted a wider U.N. role in postwar Iraq. But it is now trying to persuade the United Nations to return to Iraq to oversee the political transition in the hope that this will persuade Iraqis to back the plan. Annan pulled international staff out of Iraq last year after two suicide bomb attacks on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, and has said they will only return if given a role commensurate with the risks they will face. In another sign Washington wants to mend divisions with countries that opposed the war in Iraq, U.S. officials said the Bush administration was leaning toward reversing policy and allowing French firms to bid for prime contracts from $18.6 billion worth of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects for Iraq. Washington was also considering allowing all countries to bid on the next round of contracts, one official said, a move that would abandon Bush's previous stand that only nations whose troops risked their lives in Iraq could apply. "I've heard people back-pedalling all over the government on this," one official said. Speaking to reporters in Paris, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin suggested a possible softening of the French position on military involvement in Iraq. Asked if France would consider sending troops, he did not rule it out but said: "We shall have the opportunity to look in detail at this when a government has been formed in Iraq." Among the most pressing tasks facing the U.S.-led administration in forming a government in Iraq is the need to win over Sistani. Bremer has said he respects Sistani but there is not enough time to hold elections before a handover of sovereignty due to a lack of electoral registers and polling laws. U.S. officials say they are reviewing the plan to hold 18 regional caucuses to ensure the transitional assembly is chosen in a fair and transparent way. DEATH TOLL NEARS 500 A Sistani edict could turn many Shi'ites against Washington at a time when U.S.-led forces are battling guerrillas in the minority Sunni Muslim areas north and west of Baghdad, heartland of support for now captive former dictator Saddam Hussein. Since the start of the war in March that ousted Saddam, 343 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq, 228 of them in guerrilla attacks since Bush said major combat ended in May. Including non-combat deaths, the U.S. toll stands at 496 -- nearing the psychologically important 500 mark. The Japanese army team that left Tokyo on Friday is expected to arrive in southern Iraq within the next week to prepare for the arrival of a larger force. The dispatch marks a historic shift away from Japan's purely defensive postwar security policy and poses a huge political risk for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose government could be rocked if, as many expect, casualties occur. A U.S. military plane carrying Georgian Defense Minister David Tevzadze came under fire while landing in Baghdad on Thursday, Tevzadze said. There were no casualties. (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Niko Mchedlishvili in Tblisi and Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo)