Iraq

U.N. team meets Sistani, backs vote, but date unclear

BAGHDAD - A team of U.N. election experts met with Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric Thursday and expressed support for his demand for a direct vote to choose a new government. But there was no consensus on how soon elections could be held.

After Thursday's meeting between U.N. envoy Lakdar Brahimi and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, officials at the world body indicated that they may be leaning toward recommending national elections but delaying the process beyond July 1, the date Washington has set to hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan "understands that there is a consensus emerging ... that direct national elections are the best way to establish a parliament and government in Iraq that are fully representative and legitimate," Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman, said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

"At the same time, there is wide agreement that elections must be carefully prepared, and that they must be organized in technical, security and political conditions that give the best chance of producing a result that reflects the wishes of the Iraqi electorate and thus contributes to long-term peace and stability."

After Thursday's two-hour meeting with Sistani, Brahimi said the cleric "is still insisting on the elections" but agreed with the United Nations that voting should be "well prepared."

"They want to go toward the rule of law, they want to go toward a government that is representative and they all agree that this can best be done through elections," Brahimi told CNN. "The question is, when are these elections possible?"

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday named the final two members of the nine-member bipartisan commission that will investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs, as well as U.S. intelligence on weapons programs in North Korea, Iran, Libya and Afghanistan.

Bush added the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1990, Charles M. Vest, and Henry S. Rowen, a professor emeritus at Stanford University who was an assistant defense secretary from 1989 to 1991.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico has asked the United States and Britain to explain recent accusations they spied on U.N. delegations before the war in Iraq.

Mexico's request came a day after Chile claimed its U.N. mission telephones were tapped as the Security Council considered a resolution authorizing the war. A spokesman for Chile refused to say whom it suspected.

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