BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- A majority of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council is supporting a U.S. plan to select a provisional government and disavowing a Muslim cleric's advice.
As a result of intense lobbying over the past few days by Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, the council could be in for a showdown with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has insisted a provisional government be chosen through a national election.
"We are facing a very tense situation, perhaps the most tense since the end of the war," one of the council's Shiite members told the Washington Post. "None of us wants a confrontation, but we have to realize we are traveling down a road that could lead to a very big confrontation."
Council members and officials with the U.S.-led occupation authority said they remained hopeful Sistani's objections could be overcome with minor revisions to the plan but expressed an unwillingness to bend on the issue of general elections, on the grounds a national ballot would delay an agreed-upon handover of sovereignty, which is to take place by June 30.
