As Iraq handover looms, transition questions remain

"With the June 30 timeline, at what point does Bremer lose his powers? It's not June 29, it's some point before that, and we're seeing that process begin," says Henri Barkey, a former State Department Iraq specialist now at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA.

Coalition officials say the question of the veto is only the most fraught of several problems that have to be addressed in the coming months, with other outstanding questions including the creation of political party and electoral laws that could have a major impact on which parties have a chance to compete for power.

Mr. Barkey worries there are no obvious solutions to these questions, even as the US and the UN have set themselves a deadline of May 1 to find answers.

Though Ayatollah Sistani isn't part of Iraq's current power structure, he has more support than the members of the Governing Council and has repeatedly forced compromises on the US. But to critics, his current demands lie less in the realm of compromise than of wanting to see Shiite supremacy established in Iraq after centuries in which they may have made up a majority of the population, but never held power.

"The governing council is a tool of the US, and they're seeking to put restrictions on us so that we'll never be able to have a constitution of our own,'' says Taher Abdul al-Aamea,who runs a textile shop in Khadhimiya, a Baghdad neighborhood built around a Shiite shrine.

Mr. Aamea recently signed a petition circulated by Sistani's supporters demanding revisions to the transitional constitution. He worries that without changes, the suicide attack that killed dozens in his neighborhood during a major Shiite festival at the start of March will become the norm. "I worry that today will be better than tomorrow."

Such complaints ignore the legitimate concerns that the US and many Iraqi leaders have in balancing interests to avoid having a flawed democracy that could erupt into conflict among various factions.

One man who understands those risks is Hamid Bayati, a senior member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose leader sits on the Governing Council and agreed to accept the transitional law, despite sharing many of Sistani's reservations about its substance.

"Of course we have concerns, but we had a difficult choice to make: Either agree to a flawed document, or stop the transitional process dead,'' says Dr. Bayati.

"Since that would imply an extended occupation, we decided to let the process go forward and hope to amend some of the difficult articles as we go."

He says SCIRI has problems with Article 61 but conceded that it could play a positive role, particularly if it forces everyone at the negotiating table to agree to the tough compromises that Iraq needs.

Dr. Bayati's major concern is that the concession has been made by the appointed Governing Council, and could lack legitimacy in the eyes of average Iraqis.

A bigger concern for many Iraqis is how "real" the post June 30 sovereignty will be, particularly with the US making it clear that it will retain control over all security forces, and a current draft law on the table for the Ministry of Defense that seeks to give the US the power to appoint the minister, and hopefully keep him in for a five-year term.

"A key question here is how constraining can the US be in determining the choices [the leaders of an interim government] have to make," says Stephen Krasner, who left President Bush's National Security Council in 2002 and is now director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Stanford Institute for International Studies in California.

Krasner says it has to look like a turnover to local authorities even as the US, with its military presence and funds, retains some leverage over the transition. "You want to offer a recognition of authority, while not granting full freedom of action. It's just that you don't want to say it out loud."

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