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Bremer speaks to reporters in Washington after talks with Bush (AFP)
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BAGHDAD,
January 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Washington's top man
in Iraq Paul Bremer is due to meet with U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan in New York Monday, January 19, to urge the world body to return
to Iraq to help salvage his plan to establish a sovereign government.
Bremer's
request came as tens of thousands of Shiites took to the streets Monday
to support Shiite authority Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's unrelenting
call for direct elections and rejection of Bremer’s plans in the
second mass rally in four days, the BBC television reported.
Bremer,
accompanied by a delegation from Iraq's interim Governing Council, is
expected to ask Annan to send a team to Iraq to convince Sistani to
compromise on demands for direct elections ahead of the June 30 date for
Iraqi sovereignty, diplomats told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
His
bid followed Sunday's deadly bombing in Baghdad. A pick-up truck
crammed with half a ton of explosives and artillery shells exploded near
the main entrance to the sprawling U.S.-led occupation, killing 25
people and wounding more than 130 others.
After
talks with U.S. President George W. Bush Friday, January 16, Bremer said
he was ready to make what he called refinements to his
November plan , but he doubted direct elections could be held
before the July deadline.
Under
an agreement between Bremer and the U.S.-selected Iraqi council, a
provisional Iraqi government is to be formed by June, named by a
transitional assembly to be selected by the end of May and whose members
in turn would be nominated through regional caucuses.
Urgent
The
meeting, first proposed by Annan a month ago, has taken on new urgency
after Sistani, who long steered clear of politics, charged that the U.S.
power transfer plan was a trap for the Americans to control Iraq.
The
scholar has threatened a general strike and mass demonstrations unless
the occupation authorities bowed to his demands for direct elections.
Sistani
has rejected the caucus system planned by the Governing Council and the
occupation, which would lead to the creation of a transitional
government but would not allow for polls until the end of 2005.
Diplomats
said a U.N. fact-finding team could either convince Sistani that the
elections are not feasible or find a compromise that would avoid a
showdown between the U.S.-led occupation and the widely respected
scholar, AFP said.
But
experts believe that Sunday's massive bombing that turned the gates of
the occupation headquarters into an apocalyptic scene of corpses, fire
and billowing smoke could very well deter the U.N. from rushing in and
mending the growing rift between the Shiites and Americans.
Annan
has already indicated he is unwilling to send his personnel back into
Iraq unless he is satisfied that the security situation is improved and
that the world body will be given a substantive role to play.
The
world body left Iraq last year after the
August 19 destruction of its offices by a truck bomb that
killed envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.
