World

UN Team In Iraq To Mull Early Elex

February 8, 2004 / 1:24 PM EST / CBS/AP

A U.N. team sent to Iraq to study whether elections can be held before the handover of power to Iraqis by June 30 arrived safely in Baghdad on Saturday, the secretary-general announced.

"I am very pleased to announce that my fact-finding team has now arrived in Baghdad and is about to begin intensive consultations with Iraqi leaders and the coalition provisional authority," Kofi Annan said in a statement. He said the U.N. team hopes to listen to the views of all Iraqi constituencies.

"I hope the work of this team will help resolve the impasse over the transitional political process leading to the establishment of a provisional government for Iraq," Annan said.

Annan's announcement gave no details about the team for security reasons, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi official said U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Iraq captured a suspected member of Ansar al-Islam, a radical Muslim group, as he tried to enter the country from Iran.

U.S. and Kurdish officials believe Ansar al-Islam is linked to al Qaeda and may have been behind last weekend's twin suicide bombings in Irbil that killed 109 people, many of them Kurdish officials.

In other developments:

Helicopter pilots from the 4th Infantry Division killed one insurgent and wounded another after spotting a rocket attack against a logistics base north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Saturday.

U.S. forces in Iraq found seven pounds of cyanide during a raid late last month on a Baghdad house believed connected to an al-Qaida operative, U.S. officials said. The cyanide salt was in either one or several small bricks, and U.S. officials said they believe it was to have been used in an attack on U.S. or allied interests. Cyanide is extremely toxic and can be used as a chemical weapon, although it was unclear if the cyanide was in a form that could be used that way easily.

Insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade Saturday at a bus carrying Iraqi soldiers west of the capital Baghdad, injuring five of them and one civilian bystander, Iraqi officials said. The attack took place in Fallujah, a hotbed of the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle west of the capital, 1st Lt. Raad Mussab said. He said the attackers escaped.

An Arab League report obtained Saturday by The Associated Press accuses the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq of threatening Iraqi and regional stability by empowering Kurdish and Shiite Muslim groups. The report, drawn up by an Arab League delegation that visited Iraq in December, reflects fears among Arab countries that a post-Saddam Hussein government would give a large amount of authority to Kurdish and Shiite Muslim groups, and that those minority groups in neighboring countries would be inspired to rise up and demand more power.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief, told reporters Saturday about 300 Iraqi police had been killed since the force was reconstituted last year and "the trend line is going up." Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said the attacks aim to "isolate the coalition" by attacking Iraqis who work with it.

Some 200 former employees of the Ministry of Information gathered Saturday near the coalition headquarters in Baghdad to demand salaries. The employees were fired in May 2003 after occupation authorities dissolved the ministry, which was a principal mouthpiece of Saddam's regime. The ministry, which spied on and sought to control both Iraqi and international journalists during Saddam's regime, gained notoriety when its chief, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, denied that American troops were in Baghdad even as American tanks could be seen on the grounds of Saddam's Republican Palace.

The Bush administration's initial plan to hold regional caucuses to choose a provisional government has met stiff resistance from the leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who is demanding direct elections.

At a meeting at U.N. headquarters last month, leaders of the Iraqi Governing Council and the U.S.-led coalition asked Annan to send a team to try to forge a consensus among Iraqis about the mechanics of the transition that would end the U.S. postwar occupation.

"I firmly believe that the most sustainable way forward is one that comes from the Iraqis themselves," Annan said in the statement. "Consensus among all Iraqi constituencies is the best guarantee of a legitimate and credible transitional governance arrangement for Iraq."

Annan stressed that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions and his reports to the council have reiterated the United Nations' commitment to helping restore Iraqi sovereignty as soon as possible and to maintaining the country's territorial integrity.

After keeping the United Nations at arms-length before and during the war last year that toppled Saddam, the United States is now seeking U.N. help to deal with conflicting Iraqi positions on the transition.

Annan ordered all U.N. international staff to leave Iraq in October following two bombings at U.N. headquarters in Iraq, including one that killed top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other people.

Security has remained a major concern for the United Nations. Annan said the situation in Iraq is still not stable enough for the return of U.N. staffers, who are operating out of offices in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Annan, Jordan.

The alleged Ansar al-Islam member, Warzir Ali Wali Mamoyi, was arrested Thursday at a checkpoint in Kurdish-controlled Sulaimaniyah province, according to Omar Ghareeb, a local civil administration official.

He described Mamoyi as a member of a committee that issues policy statements for Ansar al-Islam, a mostly Kurdish militant group that follows a strict interpretation of Islam.

Kurdish officials believe Ansar al-Islam carried out the Sunday suicide bombings at the Irbil offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Another group, the Ansar al-Sunna Army, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement posted on a Web site. U.S. officers believe Ansar al-Sunna is a splinter group of Ansar al-Islam.

A Kurdish newspaper, Kurdistani Nuwe, said Friday that Mamoyi was planning to travel to the Sunni Triangle area, possibly to link up with anti-U.S. insurgents from the former Saddam regime.