A path opens to elections in Iraq

The big question mark over the voting process is whether the UN will agree with the Governing Council's and America's concerns about holding elections too soon. The Shiites, a mistrusted majority under Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab dominated rule, worry that without democratic elections they'll continue to be denied what they feel is their rightful place in the leadership of Iraq.

But Mr. Rubaie, himself a Shiite, says he believes the logic of putting off elections for the next year will prove inescapable. "Quick and dirty elections could produce an overwhelming Shiite majority council from many parts of Iraq, and that will not be credible or good for Iraqi democracy he says."

The key concern for members on the council, he says, is that there's not enough time to settle the delicate problem of creating fair and representative voting wards throughout the country.

Take a city like Basra, a Shiite bastion in the far south of the country that is nevertheless about 10 percent Sunni. Were a simple first-past-the-post vote held using the national registry of Iraqis set up by the UN oil for food program, as key aides to Sistani have suggested, cities like Basra could end up with 100 percent Shiite representation. Such imbalance would reinforce Sunni Arab suspicions about the whole process.

In even more ethnically and religiously complicated cities like the northern Mosul, which has large Kurdish and Arab populations, the situation could prove even worse, he says.

"Sistani is asking for a general election as his first choice, because it is the most direct way of expressing people's opinions," says Rubaie, who along with council member Ahmed Chalabi has been meeting regularly with Sistani and other clerics on the issue. "But he's agreed that if the UN says that for technical reasons a fair election can't be held now, that he will accept what we're proposing."

A transitional assembly the Governing Council and proconsul Paul Bremer agreed to create by June is intended to be a "big tent," including as broad a swathe of Iraq's political and sectarian divisions as possible. That would include some of the religious radicals who have been the biggest critics of the occupation. "It's better to have people inside the tent spitting out, rather than outside the tent spitting in,'' says Rubaie.

A committee set up by the Governing Council and existing provincial assemblies would select a slate of notables representative of each of Iraq's 18 governates, and then submit that slate to the people for either ratification or rejection. If rejected, the slates would be changed to take into account the public's concerns, and then resubmitted.

So far, though, Bremer has been reluctant to give full control over the selection process to Iraqis, worried that it could leave too many extremists in the interim government, says one council official.

"He wants a managed election, but the Iraqi people will see right through that,'' says the councilor, who asked not to be named. "For this process to be worth our time, it has to be put strictly into our hands."

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