Team to gauge possibility of elections, security permitting

United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, announced on Tuesday that the UN would send a team to Iraq to explore the possibility of elections before the transfer of sovereignty as long as the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) provided adequate security arrangements. His decision was in response to a request, on 19 January, from both the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) for a UN team to travel to the country to establish whether elections for a transitional national assembly could be held before 30 June, and if not, what alternative arrangement would be acceptable. ”I have concluded that the United Nations can play a constructive role in helping to break the current impasse,” Annan said in Paris, pledging to send the requested mission “once I am satisfied that the CPA will provide adequate security arrangements,” a UN statement said. News of possible UN involvement in elections has been welcomed by some Iraqis. The president of the elected District Advisory Council in the teaming Shi'ite Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City explained that there was now much support among his constituents for a UN supervisory role in plans for elections. "We believe that a UN role in Iraq could help solve many of our problems," Hussein Hejel, 29, told IRIN in his heavily guarded office. "We have great trust in the UN and we have heard and seen what they have done in other parts of the world." A US plan had envisaged regional caucuses selecting an assembly to choose a transitional government for sovereignty in June. At this point, Iraq would have been ruled under a temporary constitution, which does not envisage full elections until late 2005. Although the US administration had said elections would be difficult to organise due to a lack of electoral registers and laws, opposing direct elections, Washington has been under increasing pressure after Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's recent call for direct and early elections. Responding to Sistani, the United States has now said the United Nations could help supervise the handover of power and discuss demands by the majority Shi'ite Muslims and other Iraqis for early elections. Despite the support expressed in Sadr City, there is at least one Shi'ite leader that is opposed to a UN role. Radical Shi'ite Moqtada Sadr rejected last Friday the UN's involvement in any elections in Iraq, calling the world body "dishonest" during a Friday weekly prayer sermon. Ali Alydsry, the editor of the Sadr-supported newspaper al-Hawza, explained Sadr's position to IRIN. "He believes that the United Nations committee will work for the US," Alydsry said. "And he thinks we don't need the UN committee. More importantly, he thinks Iraq needs free elections."