...Provisional Government Linked to Bush Re-Election Campaign. Interview with Bruce St. John, author and commentator, conducted by Between the Lines' Scott Harris
Troubled U.S. Timetable for Iraq's Transition to a Provisional Government Linked to Bush Re-Election Campaign
Interview with Bruce St. John, author and commentator, conducted by Scott Harris
On the same day that 100,000 Iraqi Shiites protested in the streets of Baghdad demanding direct elections, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, met with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to ask for U.N. assistance in organizing the electoral process there. The U.S. had agreed in November to hold regional indirect caucus elections leading to a transfer of power to an Iraqi provisional government by June 30. But Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful leader of Iraq's Shiite majority, has rejected the U.S. plan in favor of direct elections in which Shiite candidates would be expected to do well.
The Jan. 18 suicide bombing at the gates of the U.S. authority's headquarters in Baghdad, killing 24, was a blunt reminder of the violence and instability that led to the United Nation's departure from Iraq in October after a bomb took the lives of 22 U.N. workers in August. Although Secretary General Annan signaled his willingness to send a small team of advisors to Iraq to assess the feasibility of direct elections, he has expressed concern about security and that any future U.N. role in Iraq does not merely serve as window dressing legitimizing the Bush administration's plans.
Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Middle East commentator Bruce St. John, who examines the U.S. timetable for Iraqi elections and the plans' relationship to President Bush's re-election campaign.
Middle East commentator Bruce St. John is author of "Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife." Read his article, "In Iraq, Timing is Everything," at the Foreign Policy in Focus website at www.fpif.org
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Original: BTL:Troubled U.S. Timetable for Iraq's Transition to a...