:) UN now backs elections in Iraq Sistani's clout increases as world body supports his call for elections over US plan for transfer of sovereignty. By Matthew Clark The United Nations has opted to support calls from one of the main leaders of Iraq's Shiite Muslim community for early elections. The move to back Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's insistance on one-person-one-vote over the US plans to hand back sovereignty took place amid heavy security in the wake of two recent suicide bombings that killed nearly 100 Iraqis. In a nod to Sistani's rising influence, UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi announced the decision after a two-hour visit to the reclusive cleric's home in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad. Mr. Brahimi said that Sistani "is insistent on holding the elections and we are with him on this 100 percent because elections are the best means to enable any people to set up a state that serves their interest." Brahimi leads a UN team that is in Iraq to assess the feasibility of holding the early direct elections that Sistani has been urging in opposition to the US plan of holding regional "caucuses" to elect an interim government by June 30. Under the plan, the interim government would not hold direct elections until 2005. The team will have its work cut out for them. As The Los Angeles Times reports: [The UN team] must sound out competing Iraqi interests and find a way to select a government that all sides find legitimate. They must do it without appearing to take sides, and they must not let the UN be forced into a role that is larger than it is willing and able to handle. It is this highly-charged environment that made Brahimi reluctant to go to Iraq after two years of nation-building in Afghanistan, reports the Times. Full article http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0212/dailyUpdate.html?s=mes