26 January 2004	Monday	03 Zilhaj 1424

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 25: Under intense pressure from the United States UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan may announce next week that he will send a mission to Iraq to bail out the United States which has signalled it is willing to scrap its plan for holding elections in the country.

The US officials have said that everything is negotiable except a June 30 deadline to hand over power to the Iraqis. Mr Annan's announcement, diplomats here said, could come as early as Monday in Stockholm, or at the latest on Tuesday in Paris, on whether elections, as Iraqi Shiite leaders want, are feasible and to recommend alternatives to the complicated US plan.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported on Sunday that the Bush administration has produced a list of possible changes for Iraq's political transition, with some US and British officials acknowledging for the first time that the original plan could even be scrapped altogether if the United States is to pre-empt the growing clamour for elections

In two rounds of talks at the United Nations and Washington last week, the United States told UN representatives that everything is on the table except the June 30 deadline for handing over power to a new Iraqi government, UN and US officials said.

"The United States told us that as long as the timetable is respected, they are ready to listen to any suggestion," a senior UN official said. The time to set up elections, however, is short. Under the current plan, decisions would have to be made by late February so a provisional national assembly and government could be chosen in time for the June 30 transfer of political power to Iraqis.

But Annan may not give details on when the electoral team, expected to leave next month, will go to Baghdad or who will lead it, the diplomats said. Instead, the secretary-general probably will link the departure of the team to a UN security assessment in Iraq, required since the attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad on Aug 19 that killed 22 people.

Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, wants a full-scale election, which likely would favour Shiites, who make up an estimated 60 per cent of Iraq's 25 million people.

Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, a member of the Governing Council, said in Washington over the week that less than a perfect election would be better than ignoring the popular vote.