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A United Nations envoy may have bailed the Bush administration out of an impasse with Shiite leaders over the timing of national elections in Iraq.
You don't hear anybody in the Bush administration disparaging the United Nations these days. In the runup to the war in Iraq, various administration officials belittled the United Nations as weak, amoral and on the verge of irrelevance. Today, those same officials realize that U.N. diplomacy represents their only realistic hope of reaching a workable compromise with Iraqi factions on the timing and manner of a transfer of power.
To the great relief of the White House, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's envoy to Iraq has concluded that valid national elections cannot be held by June 30, the deadline originally demanded by Shiite leaders. U.S. authorities also have been arguing that June elections aren't feasible, but they lack the United Nations' credibility with vital Iraqi constituencies.
Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric, announced this week that, in light of the report by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, he now will accept a timetable that calls for national elections to be held by the end of the year. With luck, the United Nations' mediation will buy the Bush administration time to stabilize Iraq and reach political compromises with restive Iraqi groups whose support is crucial to a successful transfer of power.
Sistani and other Shiite leaders already have succeeded in forcing the White House to abandon its plan to choose a new government through national caucuses rather than direct elections. However, the Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population, are still pressing other issues, including the timing of a permanent transfer of power. Sunni and Shiite clerics continue to wrangle with secular leaders over the official role Islam should play in Iraq's new constitution. And in the north, negotiations between Kurdish leaders and U.S. authorities have broken down over the extent of Kurdish autonomy in a new Iraq.
And these are our supposed friends in Iraq. Our enemies there are engaged in a much deadlier form of confrontation. Throughout the notorious Sunni triangle - and even in some areas once thought to be relatively safe - Hussein loyalists, foreign insurgents and other adversaries are still fighting a guerrilla war intended to destroy the foundations of democratic change. No viable national elections can be held until Iraq is peaceful and stable enough to conduct a national census, train police and poll workers and prepare citizens for the voting process. Again, the United Nations is uniquely experienced in organizing such efforts.
In the meantime, the White House is still committed to transferring power to a provisional government by June 30 - a date dictated as much by our own political calendar as by Iraq's. Decisions on a permanent Iraqi government may be deferred for a few months, but agreement on the nature of a caretaker government must come quickly. Brahimi's report offered several ideas from Iraqis for resolving that issue as well. The Bush administration, which belatedly realized that it needs all the military and diplomatic help it can get in Iraq, has reason to be grateful that the United Nations has proved to be relevant after all.