Top Shiite cleric demands immediate polls in major blow to US plans

Top Shiite cleric demands immediate polls in major blow to US Iraq
plans 
Nov. 28, 2003 

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - The religious leader of Iraq's Shiite Muslim
majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, demanded immediate elections at
all levels of the Iraqi administration in a major blow to the US-led
coalition's plans for a handover of power. 

The top cleric rejected the coalition's insistence that elections of
any sort were impossible before 2005, arguing that the ration-card
system in force here for more than a decade gave ample basis for an
electoral register. 

Sistani "wants the Iraqi people to be consulted," the current head of
the US-installed interim Governing Council, Jalal Talabani, told
reporters after a meeting with the top cleric in this central holy
city. 

"He wants elections to be held for the municipal councils as well as
the legislative council," said Talabani, a pro-US Kurdish politician. 

The Shiite cleric's demand hit at the heart of the coalition's plans
for a transfer of sovereignty by highlighting the gap between its
promises of post-Saddam democracy and the arcane system of indirect
selection by caucus it has created to establish a caretaker government
by June next year. 

"For Ayatollah Sistani, the current councils were not elected, and he
has requested that the occupation forces keep their promises," said
Talabani, who signed this month's agreement with the coalition on
behalf of the interim leadership 

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