Plan for Caucuses In Iraq Is Dropped
U.S. to Seek New Transition Process

By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A01

The Bush administration is abandoning the core idea of its plan to hold regional caucuses for an Iraqi provisional government and will instead work with the United Nations and Iraqis to develop yet another plan for the transfer of political power by June 30, U.N. and U.S. officials said yesterday.

The decision, forced by rejection of the caucus system by a wide range of Iraqis, means that the Coalition Provisional Authority led by the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, will instead hand over authority to a caretaker government until direct elections can be held, officials said.

In a meeting at the United Nations yesterday, Secretary General Kofi Annan told a gathering of diplomats with interests in Iraq that the Iraqis themselves should determine the participants and form of a caretaker government that will be credible to Iraq's disparate society, according to U.N. officials who attended.

Annan is prepared to dispatch his special envoy, former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi, back to Baghdad in the coming weeks to help mediate a new formula if the Iraqis and the U.S.-led coalition do not come up with another plan, U.N. diplomats and U.S. officials said.

"We need to find a mechanism to create a caretaker government and . . . help prepare the elections later," Annan told reporters after briefing U.N. members who belong to the world body's 46-nation Friends of Iraq group.