Replies to post #2515 on Foreign Correspondence

[otraque]

<<"Everyone is saying the Sistani list is going to be the clock-cleaner in this election. No other list is even going to come close," says Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress.>> You can say that again.
And this is the rub his "clock-cleaning list" will NOT be acceptable to Allawi and U.S. they are in bind, massive fraud to throw the election, which will set a huge uprising OR concede to Sistani and then you get Civil War---this has been a lose lose lose situation from the idea of the Iraq invasion germinated in the Neo-Con delusional imperialism dreams.
I have and will lash at all liberals that have a notion that "now that the disaster is reality" we can solve it.
I from the beginning said once this starts there is NO solution--=PERIOD; except a face losing embarrassing full retreat, but that is the price those that were so idiotic to support this war, will HAVE to pay OR see hell breaking loose.
Knowing this country is in the grip of a far right movement i predict all hell breaking loose.

[Amaunet]

Shiite rift may alter elections in Iraq

Divisions 'almost impossible' to fix

By Robert F. Worth
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

December 7, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A rift has developed among the major Shiite political groups here, raising the prospect of fierce competition for votes among rival Shiite factions in the coming elections and possibly altering the religious and political alignment of the country's new national assembly.

The development is a major setback for Iraq's most powerful religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who appointed a committee in October to create a single coalition dominated by Shiite religious parties.

The majority of Iraqis are Shiites, but their leaders have expressed concern that without a united front, they may lose the allegiance of more secular voters and fail to dominate the new government.

Yesterday, a coalition of several dozen groups and individuals calling itself the Shiite Council announced plans to break away from the United Iraqi Alliance, the newly named umbrella group formed under al-Sistani's auspices.

Al-Sistani was reportedly trying to repair the rift through intermediaries as late as yesterday evening.

But the divisions over power-sharing and other issues appeared to be so deep that it was "almost impossible" to reconcile the two sides, officials with the Shiite Council said.

For Iraq's Shiites, the elections scheduled for the end of January can be an opportunity to translate their majority status into political power for the first time.

But if divisions among them persist, they may translate into a political gain for Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who ruled the country for decades until the fall of Saddam Hussein, and who have expressed fears that the Shiites will seize unchecked political power in the elections.

Officials with the Shiite Council have questioned the loyalty of some of their rivals, saying the United Iraqi Alliance has favored parties and individuals with foreign connections, including many who lived in Iran and the West until Hussein was ousted.

That accusation is a potent one here and could color the political debate as campaigning begins in the coming weeks.

"How can you run with a man who tries to get foreigners to intervene in an Iraqi election?" said Ali Faisal, a spokesman for the Shiite Council, referring to Ibrahim Jafari, a member of the United Iraqi Alliance who has lived in Britain and spent time in Iran more recently.

Both groups have made it clear that they will claim the blessing of al-Sistani, who wields enormous influence as the country's top Shiite cleric. Sorting out those rival claims will be up to the voters, party officials say, because clerical decorum would certainly bar al-Sistani from taking sides in such a factional dispute.

Other Shiite figures are setting out their positions. Most of the better-known Shiite parties and figures, including the former Pentagon favorite and exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, appear to be siding with the United Iraqi Alliance for now.

But there is still time for reversals before Dec. 15, the final deadline for political groups to submit their ranked lists of candidates for the assembly.

Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who ignited two uprisings against the U.S. occupation and the interim government, has agreed to support candidates for the United Iraqi Alliance, party officials said.

But there is deep enmity between al-Sadr's prominent religious family and that of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the United Iraqi Alliance's main parties.


Considerable influence
Al-Sadr may well wield his considerable influence on behalf of the Shiite Council by also urging his followers to vote for its candidates, Shiite political figures said yesterday.
In recent weeks, a growing number of political figures, mostly Sunni Arabs, have joined a call to delay the elections for six months or so.

They say the deadly insurgency will make it impossible for many voters – especially in violence-prone Sunni areas – to reach the polls. But Shiite leaders have firmly opposed those calls, and President Bush said the elections must take place as scheduled.

Under the electoral system devised by the United Nations, Iraqis will vote not for individual candidates but for parties or coalitions, whose members will take a number of seats in the 275-seat national assembly roughly proportional to the number of votes their groups receive.

The rules require those coalitions to decide how they will allocate their seats by Friday, well before the vote, and that has been one great source of contention.

The United Iraqi Alliance had hoped to unite all the Shiite religious parties under a single banner, with a date palm as its logo. It also drew in Sunni and Kurdish parties and tribal leaders from throughout the country in an effort to create a truly national coalition under Shiite leadership.

"These are the major players in Iraq," said Hussein al-Shahristani, a former nuclear scientist imprisoned by Saddam, and a member of the Alliance's six-man coordinating committee.


Preferred positions
But the committee allocated dominant positions to the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose candidates would receive preferred positions in the Alliance's allocation of assembly seats.
That infuriated members of the Shiite Council, who were considering joining the United Iraqi Alliance but felt they were not getting their fair share and were rankled at the party's favoring of candidates with foreign ties.

In a pointed statement released yesterday, the Shiite Council openly criticized the alliance, and said one of its own goals was to "write a constitution away from foreign influence."

In Washington yesterday, Bush met in the Oval Office with the most prominent Sunni in the Iraqi government, Ghazi al-Yawer, the president of the interim government. Both men used the meeting to reinforce their message that elections must be held Jan. 30, as scheduled, despite the violence.

In making that argument, Bush said, "It will send a clear message to the few people in Iraq that are trying to stop the march to a democracy that they cannot stop elections."

He said, as he has before, that to delay the election would also send the wrong message to the entire Middle East, including Palestinians headed toward an election of their own.

Al-Yawer said "the armies of darkness" would not succeed in derailing the elections. But he objected to suggestions that the insurgents were largely from Sunni tribes. "There is unfairness by calling them Sunni insurgents – these are not Sunni," he said. "These are a mix of people who have one thing in common: hatred to the Iraqi society and hatred to democracy."

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041207/news_1n7shiite.html