No Iraq elections before US handover- UN official

LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) A UN official said today elections could not be held in Iraq before US-led authorities hand power to an Iraqi government at the end of June.

Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, also said top Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who has been demanding early direct elections, appeared to accept that time was too short to organise proper polls before the handover.

"It's not a question of delaying (the handover).

It's finding a new timetable," Fawzi told BBC radio.

"Elections will take place when the country is ready and that will be after the handover of power." Fawzi said he had attended yesterday's meeting between Brahimi and Sistani in the Shi'ite shrine city of Najaf.

"He (Sistani) seemed to accept the fact that three and a half months or whatever were not sufficient to arrange and conduct elections," Brahimi's spokesman said.

"You need to put certain things in place before you can organise elections.

There is a legal framework to be put in place, there's a political consensus that has to be reached before you can start the process of managing and organising an election," he added.

"Everything we have seen up until now indicates that it is unlikely that this country will be able to organise elections by that date," Fawzi said.

In New York, diplomats said UN officials believed elections might be possible before the end of the year, but said a Caucus system proposed by the United States, at least in the form Washington had wanted, was no longer on the table.

However, the envoys believed some transfer of power would take place on June 30, and not be delayed until after elections.

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan sent Brahimi to Iraq to resolve the dispute over how to form a provisional government.

The White House, after scorning the world body for months, asked annan to intervene when Sistani insisted on direct elections rather than Caucuses for members of a National Assembly that would choose an interim government.

Annan expects to give his recommendations on the election process before the end of the month.

Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said the secretary-general understood there was 'a consensus emerging' for direct elections as a result of talks Brahimi had with various Iraqi leaders.

But Annan made clear requirements for elections would take time and Sistani understood this.

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