UN team arrives to study possibility of elections
A UN team sent to Iraq to study whether elections can be held before the handover of power to Iraqis by June 30 arrived safely in Baghdad today, the secretary-general announced.
“I am very pleased to announce that my fact-finding team has now arrived in Baghdad and is about to begin intensive consultations with Iraqi leaders and the coalition provisional authority,” Kofi Annan said in a statement.
He said the UN team hoped to listen to the views of all Iraqi constituencies.
“I hope the work of this team will help resolve the impasse over the transitional political process leading to the establishment of a provisional government for Iraq,” Annan said.
Annan’s announcement gave no details about the team for security reasons, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said.
The US administration’s initial plan to hold regional caucuses to choose a provisional government has met stiff resistance from the leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who is demanding direct elections.
At a meeting at UN headquarters last month, leaders of the Iraqi Governing Council and the US-led coalition asked Annan to send a team to try to forge a consensus among Iraqis about the mechanics of the transition that would end the US post-war occupation.
“I firmly believe that the most sustainable way forward is one that comes from the Iraqis themselves,” Annan said in the statement.
“Consensus among all Iraqi constituencies is the best guarantee of a legitimate and credible transitional governance arrangement for Iraq.”
Annan stressed that previous UN Security Council resolutions and his reports to the council have reiterated the United Nations’ commitment to helping restore Iraqi sovereignty as soon as possible and to maintaining the country’s territorial integrity.
Annan ordered all UN international staff to leave Iraq in October following two bombings at UN headquarters in Iraq, including one that killed top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other people.
Security has remained a major concern for the United Nations. Annan said the situation in Iraq was still not stable enough for the return of UN staff, who are operating out of offices in Cyprus and Jordan.
