Grand ayatollah emerges as prominent leader in Iraq
From the Wolf Blitzer Reports staff in Washington:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- He threw a wrench into U.S. plans for a handover of power in Iraq when he insisted that a constitution and a new government must be based on direct elections, not the caucuses proposed by U.S. officials.
Those American officials are learning that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is not a man to be taken lightly.
Born in Iran, he came to Iraq as a young man to study in the holy city of Najaf, where Iran's own Ayatollah Khomeini spent his long years of exile.
The 71-year-old Sistani is considered by many to be the most revered and most influential leader among Iraq's fifteen million Shiite Muslims, who make up some 60 percent of the country's population.
When another Shiite leader was killed in a massive car bombing in Najaf a few months ago, hundreds of thousands converged on the city in mourning.
It's a powerful, passionate and highly-committed constituency. One that the U.S. is treating gingerly.
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"I have great respect with Ayatollah Sistani. He has been a leading voice in this country for half a century and I have real agreement on a number of matters that we want to see, as he does, an elected democratic government as soon as it can be done," says U.S. Civilian Administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.
During the regime of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, Shiites were oppressed. And when they answered a U.S. call to revolt after the first Gulf War, tens of thousands were slaughtered.
Free now to live they way they want, they now want their share of power.
