Shiites Impatient For Vote in Iraq

[Khephra]

Shiites Impatient For Vote in Iraq
Mistrust Greets New U.S. Plan
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 17, 2003; Page A01


BASRA, Iraq, Nov. 16 -- With a wispy beard and a gait weakened by age, Mohammed Baqir Nasseri, an influential cleric in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, has lived the life of an enemy of Saddam Hussein. With other Shiite Muslim clerics, he was driven into exile in 1979 and wandered in Iraq's diaspora. Soon after, the turquoise-tiled Ahl Beit mosque he built was seized. His death sentence was commuted only by Hussein's fall as president.

But Nasseri's message today looks forward, rather than back.

"I believe absolutely in democracy," he said, sitting next to bookcases filled with volumes on jurisprudence, law and history. "Why are running away from elections? The people have a hunger for democracy, for the person who will represent them."

Nasseri's displeasure results from a decision announced this weekend by the United States and its allies to grant independence to a provisional but unelected government by next summer. Under the plan, elections for a constitutional convention will follow in March 2005 and a permanent government will follow by the end of that year.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50007-2003Nov16.html