Road map changed to mollify Shi’ites

A NEW American plan to hand sovereignty back to Iraqis will be changed after objections from the country’s most revered Shi’ite Muslim leader, the head of Iraq’s Governing Council said yesterday.

The US-installed council’s leader said the plan would be modified to ensure a central role for Islam and to take account of the cleric’s wish that a planned transitional assembly be elected directly.

There was no immediate comment from Washington, which said earlier it would send thousands more Marines to Iraq next year to fight insurgents it blames for attacks on American-led occupying forces.

“The agreement remains, but there’s to be an appendix, with other texts. The agreement is developing,” Governing Council President Jalal Talabani told reporters after meeting Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf.

Sistani’s approval is seen as crucial to getting Iraq’s 60% Shi’ite majority to back the political timetable. The elderly cleric rarely makes public pronouncements on politics but most Shi’ites look to him for guidance.

Under the US-backed plan, regional caucuses would select an interim assembly by the end of May and this body would pick a transitional government the following month. The government would take over sovereignty from the American administration, formally ending the occupation, although US-led foreign troops were expected to remain.

“(Sistani) requested that the allies make good on the promises they made to Iraqis.

“He believes, correctly, that this is democracy,” Talabani said. “There’s an appendix that says Islam is the religion of the majority and it must be respected and considered a main source for the constitution.”

Guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at Italy’s Baghdad embassy yesterday. No one was hurt in the attack, which came two weeks after 19 Italians died in a suicide blast in southern Iraq.

Guerrillas have mounted persistent attacks on foreign targets in Iraq in recent months, and have killed 184 American soldiers since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.

American officials blame the attacks on diehard Saddam Hussein supporters and foreign Muslim militants. The Pentagon said it would send thousands more Marines to Iraq to bolster the next wave of American troops being deployed to counter insurgents.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Marine Corps to send three additional battalions, along with assorted support units, as part of a troop rotation plan for early 2004. The Pentagon said earlier this month it envisaged 105,000 American troops in Iraq by next May, down from the current 130,000. But the additional Marines will raise the total again.