Iraq Shiites Demand Elections in Protest
21 minutes ago
By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims marched peacefully in Baghdad on Monday to demand an elected government, as U.S. and Iraqi officials prepared to seek U.N. endorsement of American plans for transferring power in Iraq.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been reluctant to let the United Nations play a greater role in Iraq until he is convinced the country is safe.
Underscoring those dangers, 24 people were killed and about 120 were wounded Sunday when a suicide bomber blew up his pickup truck at a gate to the headquarters compound of the occupation authority in Baghdad, Iraq's Health Minister Khudayer Abbas said Monday.
Huge crowds of Iraqi Shiites, estimated by reporters at up to 100,000, marched about three miles to the University of al-Mustansariyah, where a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani delivered a speech he said was directed at Annan, the U.S.-led occupation authority and its Iraqi allies.
Al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shiite leader, has rejected a U.S. formula for transferring power through a provisional legislature selected by 18 regional caucuses, insisting on direct elections instead.
The legislature is supposed to appoint a transitional government, which will take over from the U.S.-led coalition administration July 1 before holding full elections in 2005.
"The sons of the Iraqi people demand a political system based on direct elections and a constitution that realizes justice and equality for everyone," al-Sistani's representative, Hashem al-Awad, said. "Anything other than that will prompt people to have their own say."
The crowd responded by chanting: "Yes, yes to elections! No, no to occupation!"
"What our religious leadership is doing today is at the heart of its mandate," cleric Faras al-Tatrasani, 36, said. "We are demanding democracy. And that's what America came to give us."
Two U.S. military helicopters hovered low over the demonstrators but otherwise there was no sign of American soldiers. Scores of armed Iraqi police stood by.
"This demonstration is a message to America that we want elections," said Naim Al-Saadi, a 60-year-old tribal chief.
Many marchers linked hands. Others carried portraits of al-Sistani and other Shiite leaders and waved computer printout banners saying, "Real democracy means real elections."
On Thursday, about 30,000 Shiites held a similar demonstration for elections in the southern city of Basra, a Shiite-dominated region.
Shiites are believed to comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people but were suppressed by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Sunni-dominated government. They fear the provisional legislature will cut them out of power again.
Meanwhile, an advance team of more than 30 Japanese soldiers crossed into southern Iraq on Monday in a controversial humanitarian mission marking Japan's most-dangerous overseas deployment since World War II.
The Japanese advance group, escorted by Dutch forces, moved overland from the U.S. military base Camp Virginia in the Kuwaiti desert to southern Iraq.
The Japanese contingent, which will grow to 1,000 by March, will help purify local water supplies, rebuild schools and provide medical care. They will carry arms for self-protection but their role will be noncombatant.
The growing clamor for political rights by the majority Shiites is ratcheting up pressure on the Bush administration and its Iraqi allies trying to control the guerrilla violence, blamed on Sunni minority insurgents loyal to Saddam.
An American soldier died Sunday of wounds suffered last week in a roadside bombing north of Samarra, according to the U.S. command. The latest American death is the 501st since the Iraq conflict began March 20.
U.S. and Iraqi Governing Council officials say it is not possible to hold free and fair elections before the July 1 deadline given the precarious security situation. U.S. officials hope Annan will support that view following his meeting Monday with chief U.S. administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
Annan withdrew all international U.N. staff from Iraq after two bombings last year at U.N. headquarters and a spate of attacks on humanitarian targets.
Sunday's bombing may have been a signal to the world organization to stay out of Iraq and a warning to Iraqis against cooperating with occupation forces.
A separate bomb blast Sunday in the southern city of Karbala killed one person and wounded 17, including 10 Iraqis and seven Iranians, police and hospital officials said.
The coalition headquarters is one of the most heavily protected areas in Baghdad. U.S. soldiers guarding the gate usually stand about 20 yards from the road behind coils of barbed wire and concrete barriers.
Witnesses said that the driver of what the U.S. military described as a white Toyota pickup truck tried to bypass a line of Iraqi workers and a crowd of U.S. military vehicles at about 8 a.m., coming as close as possible to the entrance American troops call "Assassins' Gate."
Late Sunday, the U.S. command said "about 20" people were killed and 63 wounded. Officials said they were unable to give a more precise death toll because some bodies were dismembered by the blast.
The force of the blast, from a bomb containing 1,000 pounds of explosive, rattled windows more than a mile away. Most victims were Iraqis, but the wounded included three U.S. civilians and three American soldiers, the U.S. military said.
As the article states we already have our hands full dealing with the minorty Sunni insurgents and other foriegn new-comers but imagine if the Shiites suddenly decided to take up arms ? All hell will break lose in Iraq and the body count will make a dramatic jump IMHO.
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