As Paul Bremer met with the UN and the IGC to discuss their vision of the future, thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites marched in Baghdad to demand theirs. Graham Usher reports from Baghdad On Baghdad's Jumhuriya (Republican) Bridge Iraqis are again gathering to count their dead. Two hours earlier a suicide bomber in a pick-up truck ripped through a bus, a dozen or so cars and scores of civilians queuing for work outside Assassins Gate, once regal entrance to Saddam Hussein's Republican dynasty, now the sole Iraqi access to the Coalition Provisional Authority. Twenty-three Iraqis and two American soldiers were killed in the carnage; 125 hospitalised, most of them Iraqis. The crowd is seeking news about relatives, friends and colleagues missing since dawn. American soldiers shove them back. An Iraqi in a US army uniform with the word "contractor" stitched across his chest says the FBI is investigating. "Where was the FBI when the bomb went off?" answers a young boy, who thinks he saw his brother among the dead on Al-Jazeera TV. It was the single deadliest attack in Iraq since Saddam's statue toppled on 9 April last year. Iraqis on the bridge are clear about the assassins -- "Arabs from outside Iraq", "supporters of Saddam Hussein", "Ba'athists", depending who you ask. They are less certain about the purpose. "They are targeting Iraqi civilians," says one man. "I come from Najaf. Yesterday there was an advert in the newspapers telling people to come to the Interior Ministry today. That's why there were hundreds of Iraqis outside the Gate. They were applying to work for the Americans. That's why we were hit." Another man sees a different motive. "It's to wreck the elections. Al-Sistani has called for a big demonstration in Baghdad tomorrow. The attack is a way of scaring the people. The terrorists don't want us to have a democratic government. But we won't be deterred." "We" and "us" means the Shi'ites, the largest religious group in Iraq, subject to 500 years of Sunni rule in Iraq, ruthlessly persecuted under Saddam and mightily suspicious that their new American rulers are also plotting to deny them a voice in the new Iraq. Last week Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani issued his firmest injunction yet against the CPA-Iraqi Governing Council's latest plan for the transference of sovereignty in Iraq. Paul Bremer and the IGC want a provisional legislative to be selected by 30 June in an elaborate system of regional "caucuses", drawn from bodies established under CPA "supervision". Al-Sistani wants elections pure and simple, based on one-person one-vote and supervised by the UN. On 19 January -- the day Bremer was meeting with Kofi Annan and IGC representatives to "refine" the new plan -- Al-Sistani called on his people to give flesh to his demand. It was a mighty show of strength for a cleric who is becoming less the Shi'ites' highest religious authority than their ultimate symbol of political independence. At one pointing stretching all the way from Tahrir (Liberation) Square to Mustansariyah University, an estimated 100,000 Shi'ites marched hand in hand behind green, black, red, pink and white flags championing one or other of the 12 Shi'ite imams. And their message was as disciplined as the stewards who waved the masses along the Mohamed Al-Qassim highway, banning all slogans other than those authorised by the Hawza supreme Shi'ites religious leadership in Iraq. "We will not accept Bremer's plan," said Kasim Majali, a student of Al-Hawza. "We cannot make the same mistake twice. The IGC is already unrecognised by most Iraqis. A provisional government established in the same way will make things worse. If we can't have elections by the 30 June deadline, fine -- we can wait a few more months. We want independence but it must be built on a firm basis. There is an Arab proverb: what is built wrong will remain wrong." The demonstration scored one immediate result. Two weeks ago Annan wrote to the IGC stating that "credible" and "transparent" elections could not be held by 20 June. On 19 January he said he was sending a UN delegation to Iraq to see whether elections could be held by the American determined deadline. Al-Sistani has implied that he would accept a UN judgement on elections. Bremer and many on the IGC are hoping the UN will prevail where they, manifestly, have failed. But it is not only the Americans who are concerned by the Shi'ites new found political vigour. So are many Iraqi Sunnis and Iraqi Kurds. The demonstration on 19 January may have been huge but it was exclusively Shi'ite and overwhelmingly religious in imagery if not yet in message. There was no participation by Sunni or Kurdish groups, whether religious, secular, nationalist or communist. There was barely an Iraqi flag. And for some Iraqi observers it confirmed the fear that Al-Sistani's call for elections is merely a ruse to translate the Shi'ites' numerical superiority into a new political and sectarian power. It is a fear that has to be vanquished if the Shi'ite religious consensus on elections is to become an Iraqi consensus, says Humam Hammodi, aide Adel Aziz Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "The demonstration was arranged by Al-Sistani's men. It was to show the Americans and the UN his strength among the Shi'ites. That's why the Sunni groups were not invited. But we don't want to exclude the Sunnis. On the contrary, we know we have to include them." It is a wise counsel: otherwise the road to the new Iraq may lie not among the demonstrators that massed peacefully and marched freely on Tahrir Square but among the dead and wrecks at the foot of Jumhuriya Bridge.
