27 January 2004	Tuesday	04 Zilhaj 1424

BAGHDAD, Jan 26: Security in Iraq may be too precarious to hold early elections, the country's interior minister said on Monday , as the United Nations considered whether to send a team to see if a nationwide vote is possible.

Washington, which failed to win UN backing for the war in Iraq, now wants the world body to play a significant political role in the country. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is expected to announce imminently whether he will send a team to Iraq to explore the feasibility of early elections to replace a US plan to choose a government through regional caucuses.

UN security experts are already in Iraq assessing the situation which remains fragile as was highlighted by a series of weekend attacks that left six US soldiers dead.

The US military said it was still searching for three troops missing since Sunday in Mosul. Under US.-backed plan to hand over sovereignty, regional caucuses would select a transitional assembly by May, and the assembly would choose an interim government to take over sovereignty on June 30. Elections would follow in 2005.

But many Iraqis have backed a demand by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most revered Shia cleric, for elections to be held before sovereignty is transferred. Some Iraqi officials, however, say the country is not yet ready to hold elections given the security situation.

"We ask for this matter to be postponed, even if it is for a short time, until all the political and security preparations can ensure that elections can run in a free and stable manner," Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shia, told a news conference when asked whether Iraq could hold early elections.

VERDICT SOUGHT: Washington hopes Iraqis will abide by a UN ruling on the matter. "We have asked the United Nations...for a second opinion on this issue of is it possible to get world standard elections within four, five or six months before June," said US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy Lorne Craner.

Diplomats at the United Nations said Annan may not give details on the timing of the UN mission to Baghdad or who would lead it, but it was expected to go next month.

They said Annan would probably link the departure to a UN. security assessment, required since two suicide bomb attacks on the UN headquarters in Baghdad last year prompted the world body to withdraw all international staff.

In Rome, US Vice President Dick Cheney defended the war that ousted Saddam government, despite mounting criticism over failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

In a speech in the Italian Senate, he failed to make to mention US charges that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons - the heart of the US case for the war on Iraq.

David Kay, who quit last week as chief US arms hunter, has said he no longer believes Saddam had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. Ten months after the US-led invasion to oust Saddam, violence has yet to abate. Weekend bomb attacks in Iraq killed six American soldiers and four Iraqis. At least 513 American soldiers have died in Iraq since the start of the war, 355 in combat.-Reuters