corrente

The classic question one politician asks another: "What do you want?"

More than 2500 US troops surround the city, primed for an attack to capture the renegade imam Moqtada al-Sadr. But the spiritual leader of all Iraq's Shiites, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has told them he has "drawn a red line" around Najaf.

It is a classic Iraqi power play. Ayatollah Sistani has brought the rambunctious Sadr to heel, so now he will protect him against a US threat to capture or kill the headstrong young imam, who is wanted on murder charges.

The implicit deal Ayatollah Sistani is offering the US is that it should back off in the face of his defusing a Shiite uprising that risked all-out war between the US and the majority Shiites.

There has been an ominous Iraqi silence on a United Nations outline of the structure of a provisional government to run the country between the return of sovereign power by the US on June 30 and elections to be held in January.

The plan calls for the abolition of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and of the US occupation administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority. It calls for the UN to lead a consultative process to appoint officials and a national conference to appoint a national assembly.

But no light has yet been shed on how tense relations between religious, tribal and ethnic groups will be reflected in the structure of the interim government...
(via Sidney Morning Herald)

Sistani, Sistani I love you Sistani,
You're always a day away...