U.N. team will decide on elections

The U.S. hopes intervention will break a deadlock with an Iraqi cleric.
PARIS (AP) -- The United Nations will send a team to Iraq to determine whether elections should be held once the U.S.-led coalition authority can guarantee the mission's safety, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.
Annan was asked by the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi Governing Council to consider sending a team to examine the possibility of holding elections before the return of Iraqi sovereignty June 30.
The U.N. chief said he believes the world body can play "a constructive role" in helping to break an impasse over the selection of a future interim Iraqi government and will send in a team as soon as security arrangements can be made.
"The mission will ascertain the views of a broad spectrum of Iraqi society in the search for alternatives that might be developed to move forward to the formation of a provisional government," Annan said in a statement issued in Paris.
Breaking deadlock
The United States is hoping that U.N. intervention will break a deadlock between the United States and a powerful cleric over how to choose an interim Iraqi government.
"I have concluded that the United Nations can play a constructive role in helping to break the current impasse," Annan said. "Therefore, once I am satisfied that the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] will provide adequate security arrangements, I will send a mission to Iraq in response to the requests that I received."
A leading Iraqi cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, opposes the U.S. blueprint for transferring power to the Iraqis by July 1. He advocates a transitional legislature to be elected, rather than appointed in regional caucuses, as the Americans have proposed. He has drawn tens of thousands of supporters out to protest the American plans.