U.N. Iraq adviser issues vote warning

The United Nations’ senior adviser on Iraq warned yesterday that premature elections could do more harm than good by enflaming ethnic and political divisions in a nation reeling from attacks on civilians who cooperate with the U.S.-led coalition.

The warning by Lakhdar Brahimi, who just concluded a two-year assignment as the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, came as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced in Paris that he would send an electoral team to Iraq to “search for alternatives” to the selection of caucuses this spring.

“If you get your priorities wrong, elections are a very divisive process,” Mr. Brahimi said at a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington.

“They create tensions. They create competition. And in a country that is not quite stable enough to take that one has to be certain it will not do more harm than good.”

Mr. Annan’s announcement, which had been anticipated, was received with relief in Washington and Baghdad, where the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council is divided on whether to stay with their own plan to select caucuses or yield to demands from a prominent Shi’ite cleric for full and immediate democracy.

“I have concluded that the United Nations can play a constructive role in helping to break the current impasse,” Mr. Annan said yesterday.

“Once I am satisfied that the will provide adequate security arrangements, I will send a mission to Iraq in response to the requests that I received.”

The United Nations pulled out of Iraq in October following attacks on its facilities in Baghdad, including an Aug. 19 bombing of its headquarters that killed 22 persons.

“We are talking about putting staff members at risk,” U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe told reporters in New York.

She said that U.N. security experts had arrived in Baghdad yesterday to determine whether it is safe enough for a U.N. team of electoral officials to operate.

Diplomats and Iraqi officials said they expect a team of electoral officials will arrive in Baghdad by late next week, following the Muslim holiday Eid-al-Adha.

“This is very good news, that he will send the team,” said Hamid al-Bayati, a political adviser to Abdel Aziz Hakim, the most prominent Shi’ite member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

“We welcome their help to find ways to hold a direct election.”

Mr. Hakim said that it was his impression that the electoral experts would travel to the north to visit Kurdish areas, and to Najaf, in central Iraq, to meet with representatives of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the reclusive cleric who has mobilized thousands of Shi’ites to demand direct elections.

Ayatollah al-Sistani’s associates have said he would accept the U.N. recommendation on whether direct elections could be held before July 1.

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