NY Times: Iraqi Ayatollah Insists on Vote by End of Year

[Wetzelbill]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 26 — Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful religious leader, demanded Thursday that nationwide elections be held by the end of the year, but dropped his earlier insistence on holding them before the United States transfers sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30.

In a statement released by his office in Najaf, Ayatollah Sistani called for "clear guarantees," possibly in the form of a resolution by the United Nations Security Council, that elections would be held in 2004. He said the caretaker government that is likely to take control of the country from the Americans at the end of June should confine itself to an agenda largely limited to setting up the elections.

"The period in which an unelected government should take control of this country must be short and for few months only," the ayatollah said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/middleeast/27IRAQ.html?th