But some observers doubt the world body will be able to present an unbiased perspective of the view on the ground, because of U.S. opposition to the proposed vote.
After a meeting with US President George W. Bush on Tuesday, Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters his institution has a definite role to play in Iraq – but he left undefined what that role would be.
So did Bush, who claimed the ”United Nations needs to play a vital role and it’s an important role”, but stopped short of spelling out what that means for Washington.
”I have decided to send in a team, a team that will go in to try and work with the Iraqis in finding the way forward,” Annan added.
The U.N. team will travel to Iraq at a time when both the political and military climates have continued to deteriorate.
Politically, the Shiite majority is demanding direct elections by Jun. 30, a proposal rejected by the United States. Militarily, suicide attacks in Iraq have continued to rise, making it unsafe even for international humanitarian organizations to operate inside the occupied country.
”We are going to go there to help the Iraqis, to help them establish a government that is Iraqi,” Annan said. ”The date of Jun. 30 has been suggested, but there is some disagreement as to the mechanism for establishing the provisional government.”
The United Nations has already dispatched two separate teams to probe the security situation in advance of the electoral team. As well, ”the coalition has promised to do the maximum to protect the UN team working in Iraq”, Annan added.
But according to a long-time UN employee, ”if the United States cannot protect its own soldiers from the continued suicide bombings in Iraq, how can it assure the safety of UN personnel”?
When US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz attended a town council meeting in northern Iraq last weekend, he was told clearly that the majority Shias will not compromise on their demand for direct elections in the country.
The United States, which claims security is not adequate for nationwide elections, is seeking endorsement from the UN team to help jettison the proposal for the June vote, say Middle East experts.
Washington fears that given the vote, the Shias might establish an Iranian-style Islamic government in Baghdad, the experts point out.
Dilip Hiro, a Middle East expert and author of the just published ‘Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and After’, says he is not sure security fears are prompting Washington to block elections.
”The Pentagon claims that the number of attacks has declined to 17, from 35 per day, and security patrols have been reduced to 500, from 1,500 per day,” Hiro told IPS.
That means security concerns are not sufficient grounds to deprive Iraqis of a say in their own political future, he added.
”You must be aware that despite the 50,000 deaths in 15 years in Kashmir (with a population of nine million people), the Indian government continues to hold both parliamentary and state elections there by over-saturating the province with soldiers and paramilitaries,” Hiro said.
He added that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite leader demanding direct elections, suggested as early as December last year to get the United Nations to decide.
”(The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority) Paul Bremer paid no attention to Sistani,” Hiro said. ”And now there is a grassroots movement for early elections.”
The real reason for US opposition to direct elections can be found elsewhere, says Hiro. The best answer, he added, was provided by Noah Feldman, a New York University law professor and constitutional adviser to Bremen, who is quoted as saying, ”it would be a disaster to have an election whose legitimacy was contested”.
”Historical experience also suggests that quick elections under post-war conditions elect people not dedicated to democratization. Simply put, if you move too fast, the wrong people could get elected,” Feldman said.
Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of the online website ‘Electronic Iraq‘, told IPS it is reasonable to assume the Bush administration is afraid of the ”wrong people” being elected.
”We can only guess at US motives, but it is very ironic that Bush went to war supposedly to bring democracy to the Iraqi people, and now hundreds and thousands of Iraqis are marching for elections that the United States does not want to have,” he added.
Before the war, said Abunimah, US postwar plans were very vague, ”but we can almost be sure that they did not include turning Iraq over to any regime in which the Shia establishment are the key players”.
Instead of elections, the United States wants provincial caucuses – a totally new concept to Iraq and the Arab world – that in effect will ensure its handpicked nominees take over the civil administration when the CPA leaves Baghdad on Jun. 30.
”The Shiites do not require divine revelation to see through the US plans to perpetuate its influence through an opaque process of caucuses designed, implemented and run by Washington and its Iraqi appointees,” said Robert Scheer, writing in the ‘Nation’ magazine in December.
”It’s just colonial politics, as usual. That’s why the conservative Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered cleric of Iraq’s Shiites (who make up 60 percent of the country) is requesting a transparent one-person, one-vote election,” he added.
Hiro says the arithmetic is simple: about 80 percent of Shias, one-half of Sunnis and 10-15 percent of Kurds support an Islamic republic. ”The neo-conservatives (in the United States) know this, as do the members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council,” he said.
Last month, Annan jumped the gun when he said that direct elections before Jun. 30 might not be possible for logistical reasons.
Asked if the United Nations, increasingly perceived in some quarters as a mouthpiece of the Bush administration, could be trusted to support Iraq for Iraqis, Abunimah said, ”I think there are two things about the United Nations that are consistently true in recent years.”
”First,” he added, ”it is staffed by some of the most dedicated and talented professionals the world has. Second, the top leadership, especially the secretary-general, has shown an alarming tendency to fold under US pressure”.
”I am not sure how the United Nations is perceived by Iraqis – probably with very mixed feelings – but here in Jordan, I think many people feel that Kofi Annan has been a very weak and compliant leader,” Abunimah said.
