BAGHDAD, Dec 12: Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, Iraq’s highest-ranking Shia leader, wants the United Nations to rule if early elections can take place in the country, in a new embarrassment to the US occupation authorities.

Washington, which has decreed a lengthy delay before proper elections are held in 2005, can ill-afford to snub the religious leader of Iraq’s majority community.

“Ayatollah Sistani maintains his call for elections in Iraq unless a neutral UN committee, appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan, visits Iraq and reaches the conclusion that in the current circumstances it is technically and politically impossible to hold general elections,” said interim Governing Council member Muwaffak al Rubaie.

He met the Shia leader, who along with three other ayatollahs make up the Shias’ supreme religious authority, at his power base in Najaf on Thursday.

The Governing Council signed an agreement with the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) on Nov 15 to transfer sovereignty to a transitional national assembly by May 31 next year.

General elections would not take place until March 2005, a date Ayatollah Sistani has rejected as far too late.

The deal gave no role at all to the United Nations, but stipulates that the transitional assembly will be made up of notables elected by a 15-member committee. Five of the committee would be appointed by the Governing Council, the rest by provincial assemblies.

Several Shia figures demanded the world body be brought into the process. Governing Council member Mohammad Bahr al Olum urged that the written agreement give the transitional government the right to call on the assistance of the United Nations or a country of its choice.

The current chairman of the council, Abdul Aziz al Hakim, also a Shia, pointed out that the UN’s exclusion was a problem.

Ayatollah Sistani, who has repeatedly called for general elections to the first assembly in the new Iraq, rejected a compromise offered by the Governing Council.

“We did not reach an agreement on this question and discussions are continuing between the Governing Council and the Marjaiya” (Shiite leadership), Mr Rubaie said.

He met the ayatollah for three hours along with Ahmed Chalabi, another Governing Council member who is also a Shiite, but the ayatollah threw out their proposal for a referendum, Mr Rubaie added.

“We put forward a compromise proposal: the appointment of a committee of 100-150 people from all political currents in Iraq, including those not represented on the council.”

The names would then be put to a national referendum, which, Mr Rubaie said, would be “easier to organize than general elections” that require constituencies to be drawn up, a list of candidates and an electoral campaign.

The interim council’s 25 members are clearly divided over the election issue.

The debate opposes those whose prime objective is the return of sovereignty and an end to occupation to those who stress that the Iraqi people must first be consulted to give legitimacy to any new leaders.

IRANIAN LEADER: A top Iranian conservative leader on Friday called on people to stand up against the United States forces in Iraq, accusing US troops there of insulting Islam by attacking holy sites.

“If they are not stopped, tomorrow will be Karbala and then it will be the turn of Najaf,” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads the powerful Guardians Council legislative vetting body, said in a Friday prayer sermon at Tehran university.

He was reacting to bloody clashes in the Iraqi town of Samarra earlier this month. Samarra, along with the cities of Najaf and Karbala further south, is a holy site and place of pilgrimage for Shias.

“Curses and death to America,” Ayatollah Jannati said. “They are rude and insolent people, they are fighting Islam, and what they did in Samarra is an overt insult to Islam.”

SHOOTING: A land dispute degenerated into a shootout between Arabs and Turkmen on Friday in the Taza area, south of the Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, police said, reporting no casualties.

Firing began before Friday prayers but was quickly halted, said Ali al Obeidi, police director at the town 25 kilometres south of Kirkuk.

The Turkmen want back land they say was confiscated from them in Bashir village and handed to Arabs by Saddam Hussein’s government.

The 50 Turkmen families are living in a camp outside the village supported by 400 militiamen from the Badr brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Some 5,000 people from 10 tribes live inside the village.

The Badr brigade issued a statement after the firefight demanding the return of Turkmen property and the departure of the Arabs within a week.

Kirkuk’s deputy governor, Ismail Ahmad al Hadidi, met both sides and called for restraint.

A meeting is scheduled for Sunday between US commanders and Kirkuk governor Abderrahman Mustafa Zanghene to try to find a settlement. —AFP