Word: itely
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Behind the scenes, the place was buzzing. Aides and emissaries shuttled through the heavy wooden doors leading into Sistani's office, trying to determine whether the reclusive cleric, 75--the religious figure most revered by Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority--will bend in his opposition to the U.S. plan to hand over power by June 30 to a transitional Iraqi government chosen by an as-yet-undefined caucus system. Sistani says he will urge his followers to reject any new government unless it is directly elected. To those who met with him last week, Sistani seemed good-humored...
Still, U.S. officials are worried that an election as early as this summer would give Iraq's Shi'ites, who make up 60% of the population but were repressed by Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, a tremendous edge. With Saddam's Baathist structures gone, the Sunnis are disorganized and demoralized. Shi'ite religious institutions, by contrast, are strong. Among some in Washington, that raises the specter of a replay of the 1979 Iranian revolution, in which fundamentalist Shi'ite clerics took charge of the government, which proved hostile...
...last week's swap of Palestinian and other Arab prisoners for a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers represents a real problem. The three-year intifadeh has left a power vacuum in the West Bank and Gaza that Hizballah, the Beirut-based, Iranian-backed Shi'ite group, has gradually been filling. The prisoner swap, mediated by Germany, boosts Hizballah's support among Palestinians and illustrates the ineffectuality of Arafat's regime, which has fruitlessly demanded that Israel release Palestinian detainees. "Arafat is scared to death because of what happened between Hizballah and Israel," says a senior...
...insisted it can't comply with demands from Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani, that the first post-Saddam government be established via nationwide direct elections. U.S. officials say that would be too difficult to pull off before the June 30 deadline for the transfer of power. Instead, the U.S. wants the new government to be chosen by local caucuses. Ahead of meetings in New York City this week with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian chief in Iraq, said, "We have doubts, as does the Secretary-General, that elections...
...security in Iraq, which was made tragically apparent by the attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last August. U.S. and U.N. officials privately say, however, the real concern is that Iraq's Sunnis, already a minority, are so poorly organized that direct elections would lead to a Shi'ite monopoly. That not only would stoke the flames of a potential Sunni rebellion but also could prompt Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to refuse to recognize the new Iraq and pave the way for an anti-American alliance with Iran...