Meeting in Baghdad Presages Outcome of Iraqi Elections

WASHINGTON – The results of next month’s Iraqi elections may have been decided in a six-hour meeting that ended early this morning in Baghdad.Shiite political parties emerged from the meeting with a unified list of candidates for the January 30 election for the 275-member legislative assembly. That list is almost certain to dominate on election day, making its members the leaders of the first democratically elected Iraqi government in history. If voting goes as recent polling indicates, the Shiites will command 60% of the new Parliament that will draft a new constitution for their nation emerging from the captivity of Saddam Hussein rule.Yesterday’s caucus didn’t bypass the voters, but it seems likely to prevent a divisive political campaign between rival Shiite factions that could have left other Iraqi parties, like Sunnis or Kurds, in position to wield an effective majority.For President Bush, who has an interest in a peaceful Iraq that serves as a democratic model, the outcome signaled by the results of yesterday’s meeting poses both risks and opportunities. Some fear that a Shiite-dominated Iraq could fall under the influence of Iran, which has been an Islamic theocracy since the 1979 revolution. But others say it could point the way to Iraqi self-rule, since Shiites represent, at a minimum, a 60% majority in the country.“If the Shiites manage to maintain this unity then they have a strong chance of not only winning a plurality but a clear majority of the votes. This is especially true if votes are cast by Iraqi Shiia living in Iran,” the former constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, Noah Feldman, said yesterday in an interview.Mr. Feldman, who has just finished a new book, “What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building” added, “A Shiite government is inevitably going to have to take serious account of Iran, although so is any government that emerges.”An author who is writing a book on the 1991 Shiite and Kurdish uprisings in Iraq and who covered the anti-Saddam rebellions for the Economist, Frank Smyth, told The New York Sun yesterday he thought it was generally beneficial to the Shiites for their leaders to have forged a consensus political slate.“This is a positive development for the Shiite community to provide a unified slate for voters,” he said. “But the question is whether this Shiite unity will be threatening to both the Sunni and the Kurdish minorities.”Until yesterday, it appeared likely that the Shiite vote would split between two factions – one blessed by the powerful Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and a smaller faction led by the Shiite Political Council, which presented itself as more independent of Iranian influence. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, formed the council in June after falling out of favor with Washington and being iced out of the transitional government that took power on June 30.Last night after six hours of intense talks, the two factions were brought together and agreed to field the same slate of candidates, a participant in the discussions told The New York Sun on condition of anonymity. This source said that the compromise gave the Shiite Political Council a better ranking for their candidates on the unified Shiite ballot, increasing the chances that individuals independent of the two major Iran-backed parties would secure positions in the new parliament. The list will be made public tomorrow at a press conference in Baghdad.Under the new agreement, Mr. Chalabi, and other top leaders of the Shiite Political Council are almost guaranteed a spot in the new legislature. While the same can be said for the leaders of the two major Iran-backed parties – Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, these parties will no longer monopolize the top positions on the Shiite list. Also guaranteed 30 seats will be the party of Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose militia challenged American troops earlier this year in a standoff in the holy city of Najaf. Placement on the list reflects political clout and Mr. al- Sistani has assigned the top slots to handpicked and largely unknown independents.A columnist for the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat, Salameh Nemat, told the Sun yesterday that he believe the Shiite majority in Iraq would eventually gain power by either elections or civil war. “The Shiites will emerge as the power brokers by either the bullet or the ballot next year. So far it looks like it will be the ballot,” he said.Mr. Feldman said that a Shiite-dominated legislature, which is expected to choose the next prime minister early next year, will not necessarily follow the model of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has rendered their elected legislature largely powerless by investing control over the country’s military and intelligence services in the hands of unelected clerics.“Ayatollah Sistani has already made it clear he is going to chart a different course than the Islamic revolution. To elaborate, the Iranian constitution in its original form was not itself a democratic constitution, whereas Sistani has said he wants a constitution drafted by the people’s representative and then ratified by the people, neither of which happened in Iran,” Mr. Feldman said.Among the losers in yesterday’s negotiations is the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who made a bid this month to affiliate with the Shiite list even though his political party, the Wifaq, was comprised largely of ex-Baathists who have a greater following among the country’s Sunnis. Mr. Allawi is a Shiite and at this point he has not been able to get himself on the other likely winning ethnic slate being submitted by the Kurds.The next legislature will pick a new interim prime minister early next year and the two leaders who had been vying for the post, Finance Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi and the head of the committee putting together the Shiite list, Hussein Shahrestani, have been assigned lower ranking, raising speculation that Mr. al-Sistani may choose a dark horse candidate for the top executive spot after the elections.The Shiite list also will include some secular Sunnis that have distanced themselves from the interim government and the Wahhabi based religious parties. For example, longtime Iraqi National Congress member Mudhar Shawkat will get a fairly high ranking on the Shiite list of candidates.In Baghdad yesterday, not all talk was on the upcoming elections. In a fiery address to the interim legislature, the deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, said that some of Iraq’s neighbors were harboring organizations responsible for the murder of his country’s citizens.“There is evidence indicating that some groups in some neighboring countries are playing a direct role in the killing of the Iraqi people and such a thing is not acceptable to us,” the Associated Press quoted Mr. Saleh as saying. “We have reached a stage in which if we do not see a real response from those countries, then we are obliged to take a decisive stance.”In Moscow yesterday, President Putin, peeved at American pressure on his country to stay out of the internal politics of the Ukraine, expressed grave doubts the elections scheduled for next month could be pulled off.“Honestly speaking, I cannot imagine how it is possible to organize elections under the conditions of occupation by foreign forces,” the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Mr. Putin as saying at the meeting. “At the same time, I don’t understand how you alone can remedy the situation in the country and prevent its disintegration,” he added with Mr. Allawi, on a visit to the Russian capital, looking on.

Meeting in Baghdad Presages Outcome of Iraqi Elections

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