World

Perilous Politics In Iraq

January 20, 2004 / 7:10 AM EST / CBS/AP

Tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims marched peacefully in Baghdad on Monday to demand an elected government, as U.S. and Iraqi officials prepared to seek U.N. endorsement of American plans for transferring power in Iraq.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been reluctant to let the United Nations play a greater role in Iraq until he is convinced the country is safe.

Underscoring those dangers, 31 people were killed and about 120 were wounded Sunday when a suicide bomber blew up his pickup truck at a gate to the headquarters compound of the occupation authority in Baghdad, Iraq's Health Minister Khudayer Abbas said Monday.

An American soldier died Sunday of wounds suffered last week in a roadside bombing north of Samarra, according to the U.S. command. The latest American death is the 501st since the Iraq conflict began March 20.

In other developments:

Almost a year after President Bush's State of the Union speech accusing Iraq of hoarding illegal weapons, none have been found. A week of tests in Iraq and the United States showed that 36 mortar shells believed to have a blister agent inside had no chemical agents, the Dutch military said. The Washington Post reports the failure to find any WMD has undermined the credibility of American intelligence.

An advance team of more than 30 Japanese soldiers crossed into southern Iraq in a controversial humanitarian mission marking Japan's most-dangerous overseas deployment since World War II.

U.S. troops killed three Arab foreigners and seized weapons after a gunbattle at what Iraqi police described as a "terrorist safehouse" in a southeastern suburb of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

As many as nine liquor store owners, most of them Christians, have been killed in Basra since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April, according to merchants. The slayings have raised concerns within the U.S.-led coalition about the prospects for a tolerant and democratic society emerging.

The Pentagon plans to shift long-range bombers and other warplanes to Guam and elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific to offset a loss of combat power as thousands of American soldiers and Marines in that region depart for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials say.

Huge crowds of Iraqi Shiites, estimated by reporters at up to 100,000, marched about three miles to the University of al-Mustansariyah, where a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani delivered a speech he said was directed at Annan, the U.S.-led occupation authority and its Iraqi allies.

Al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shiite leader, has rejected a U.S. formula for transferring power through a provisional legislature selected by 18 regional caucuses, insisting on direct elections instead.

The legislature is supposed to appoint a transitional government, which will take over from the U.S.-led coalition administration July 1 before holding full elections in 2005.

"The sons of the Iraqi people demand a political system based on direct elections and a constitution that realizes justice and equality for everyone," al-Sistani's representative, Hashem al-Awad, said. "Anything other than that will prompt people to have their own say."

The crowd responded by chanting: "Yes, yes to elections! No, no to occupation!" On Thursday, about 30,000 Shiites held a similar demonstration for elections in the southern city of Basra, a Shiite-dominated region.

Shiites are believed to comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people but were suppressed by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government. They fear the provisional legislature will cut them out of power again.

U.S. and Iraqi Governing Council officials say it is not possible to hold free and fair elections before the July 1 deadline given the precarious security situation.

Top U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer maintains that elections cannot be organized in time to meet the June 30 deadline, given the ongoing violence and lack of voter rolls.

That view is backed by Annan, who has called for the process of choosing an interim assembly to be expanded to include all segments of Iraqi society and to be fully transparent.

Annan recommended an early transfer of sovereignty "so he's pleased that they're moving towards this objective and he wants to help them in any way he can," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Friday.

Pachachi and Bremer want Annan to state clearly that credible elections before July 1 are not possible, a coalition official said in Baghdad on condition of anonymity. The coalition also reportedly wants the United Nations to play some sort of advisory role during the caucuses.

U.N. officials say Annan will express a readiness to assist the Iraqis in drafting a constitution and holding general elections, which are called for by the end of 2005 under the Nov. 15 plan.

But what meaty role the United Nations could — or would — play before the June 30 transfer of power is unclear.

"By arranging three-way talks involving the U.N., the Iraqi Governing Council and the Coalition, the Bush Administration is building vital support it needs to transfer power," says CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk.

"Coming off a weekend of violence directed at the coalition presence in Iraq, the Bush Administration needs the U.N. to help broker a compromise on the election process with the Iraqi Shiites, who are calling for direct elections and it needs the U.N. to return to Baghdad," says Falk.

The growing clamor for political rights by the majority Shiites is ratcheting up pressure on the Bush administration and its Iraqi allies trying to control the guerrilla violence, blamed on Sunni minority insurgents loyal to Saddam.

Sunday's bombing may have been a signal to the U.N. to stay out of Iraq and a warning to Iraqis against cooperating with occupation forces.

The coalition headquarters is one of the most heavily protected areas in Baghdad. U.S. soldiers guarding the gate usually stand about 20 yards from the road behind coils of barbed wire and concrete barriers.

Witnesses said that the driver of what the U.S. military described as a white Toyota pickup truck tried to bypass a line of Iraqi workers and a crowd of U.S. military vehicles at about 8 a.m., coming as close as possible to the entrance American troops call "Assassins' Gate."

The force of the blast, from a bomb containing 1,000 pounds of explosive, rattled windows more than a mile away. Most victims were Iraqis, but the wounded included three U.S. civilians and three American soldiers, the U.S. military said.

A separate bomb blast Sunday in the southern city of Karbala killed one person and wounded 17, including 10 Iraqis and seven Iranians, police and hospital officials said.