WP: U.S. Moves To Salvage Transition

Bremer to Confer With Top Officials

Friday, January 16, 2004; Page A01

The U.S. governor in Iraq headed back to Washington for talks today with President Bush's foreign policy team amid deep uncertainty within the administration over how to save its plan for handing over political power to Iraqis by July 1.

L. Paul Bremer will meet with administration officials on the eve of talks Monday at the United Nations over Iraq's future. After a year of tension with the world body, Washington is now trying to build a partnership with the United Nations to help solve a growing dispute over how to select a new Iraqi government to replace the U.S. occupation, U.S officials said yesterday.

As they reached out to the United Nations, administration officials sought to placate key allies yesterday by saying that they are leaning toward switching course to allow France, Germany and Russia to bid on contracts for rebuilding the war-torn country.

But U.S. officials still have not settled on a strategy for overcoming the latest obstacle to their plan in Iraq -- the growing insistence by Iraq's most popular religious leader that an interim government must be chosen through elections, rather than through a system of caucuses as envisioned by the United States. Officials in Washington fear that a failure to settle the dispute could imperil prospects for a peaceful political transition in Iraq.

After weeks of quiet overtures and secret letters to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, administration officials say they are baffled over exactly what he wants -- and even more confused about what it will take to get him to back off his demand for direct elections.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21187-2004Jan15.html

he's bringing bad news for *.

Since when did this become a salvage operation with "deep uncertainty".

Must be that Ali Sistani is a bigger problem than they have yet to admit. Ali better head for the caves.