Iraq council members don’t want UN team return

By: Hamoud Kufi

BAGHDAD, Iraq: Iraqi officials and a source close to the US-sponsored political process said influential Shiite members of the Governing Council don't want the UN team of experts that visited Iraq last month to be invited back to help.

They charge that UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, the team's Algerian leader, toed the US policy line when he decided in a report last month that elections by June 30 were not feasible for reasons long cited by Washington — no electoral structure, no reliable census and an untenable security situation.

The report was compiled after a weeklong visit to Iraq last month by Brahimi's team of UN election experts.

“Lakhdar Brahimi has achieved what the United States wanted from him,” charged Hamed al-Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. “I don't recall anything agreed that suggests that the UN will be invited back to help. It may be just a common presumption.”

END