Shia ayatollah in Iraq calls for assembly elections

IRAQ: Iraq's supreme Shia figure, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has issued a ruling which could compel the US to rethink its plan for handing over sovereignty to an Iraqi provisional government by July.

The plan envisages the enactment of a "basic law" and the appointment by local caucuses of a national assembly to choose a provisional government to rule until a new constitution can be drafted and elections held.

In a two-part fatwa, the ayatollah said on Saturday the basic law should be "presented to the \ representatives of the Iraqi people for their approval" and called for elections to the assembly.

In July he issued his first post- war fatwa, insisting that members of a proposed constitutional commission should be elected. This forced the chief US administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, to revise his original strategy.

The grand ayatollah has emerged as the most powerful political personality in the country because he commands the loyalty and respect of the majority of the Shias, 60 per cent of the population.

While refusing to endorse the war and occupation and to meet US officials, he has called upon his community to give the US time to deliver democracy and reconstruct the country.

If the ayatollah had adopted a hostile attitude, the US and its allies would be facing a widespread popular revolt in Shia as well as Sunni areas.

A pious man belonging to the school of thought which holds that clerics should not engage in politics, Ayatollah Sistani has reluctantly adopted a determining role because he had no choice.

Shias could turn to his rival, the rabble-rousing anti-US cleric Sayyed Muqtada Sadr, if there was no powerful moderate voice in the community. The Sadrists, who call for prompt US withdrawal, are accused of murdering a pro-Western cleric and attempting to kill a grand ayatollah.

Iran-born Ayatollah Sistani opposes the installation in Iraq of an Iranian-style rule of the jurisprudence or valayet-e-faqih, favoured by Sayyed Sadr and other Iraqi Shia leaders. Under this system, a clerical superstructure possessing the levers of power has been imposed on Iran's elected president and parliament.

Ayatollah Sistani believes clerics should confine themselves to offering guidance to elected officers of government.

It is ironic, therefore, that he should now unofficially assume the role which is formally held in Iran by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Guide, and that the US finds itself seeking the endorsement of its plans for democratisation from Iraq's most senior Shia cleric.

The ayatollah issued two other rulings last week. He said the basic law should reflect Iraq's Muslim character and stipulated that legislation should not be contrary to Islamic law and practice.

Since he is the only person qualified to decide whether the basic law meets these requirements, his role can only grow if the US continues to listen to his pronouncements.