U.N. Envoy Says Iraq Is a ‘Mess’

BAGHDAD — Car bombs wreaked havoc in Baghdad and northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least 14 people, as the U.N. special envoy to Iraq said the election scheduled for the end of January might have to be postponed.

A delay in the election would anger many Shiite Muslims, who are expected to win the largest portion of the seats in the transitional national assembly to be chosen in the vote.

And it would derail American plans to begin reducing the number of troops in Iraq next year.

Four U.S. troops died Saturday. Two were killed in an attack in Mosul, the military said, and two others were killed by roadside bombs in Baghdad and Baqubah, 35 miles northeast of the capital. The military also announced that a suicide car bombing Friday killed two members of the U.S.-led forces near Trebil, a town close to the border with Jordan. Their nationalities were not given.

In one of the car bombings targeting Iraqis on Saturday, seven people were killed at the Karkh police station, one of the larger police offices in Baghdad. Although the tactic of targeting police stations is not new, the insurgents appear to be using it now to undermine voter confidence. The police and the Iraqi national guard will be responsible for protecting polling stations on election day.

In an article published in a Dutch newspaper Saturday, U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said bluntly, “It is a mess in Iraq.” Asked whether it was possible to hold elections under current conditions, Brahimi said, “If the circumstances stay as they are, I don’t think so,” according to a Reuters report on the article.

The U.N. has been under intense pressure from Washington to accelerate its election preparations. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan at their recent meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to speed election preparations and increase the number of electoral experts in Iraq, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

Annan and U.N. election officials have said that polling preparations are on track, and they are quietly building up the U.N. presence in Iraq. But the United Nations has also said that security conditions are the primary consideration in determining whether the election can be held as planned.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times last month, Annan said he would not shrink from telling Iraqi officials if he thought the January vote were not feasible, although it would be up to the Iraqi government to decide whether to hold the election.

“As we go, we will give them honest advice,” he said.

The United Nations’ view on the viability of elections is crucial because U.N. officials may be the only ones with enough credibility to persuade the Shiite leadership, and specifically Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, that a delay would be for the good of the country and would not compromise Shiite ambitions for political power.

Sistani, the senior religious leader for Iraqi Shiites, wanted a direct election to be held in June, but after hearing from U.N. technical experts, he agreed to wait six months to facilitate broader participation. It is unclear whether he could be persuaded to wait longer.

Any delay without Sistani’s approval could cause a massive backlash from the country’s majority Shiites, who are eager to make themselves heard after 30 years of repression under Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s Sunni Muslims argue that the instability in predominantly Sunni regions makes it unlikely that significant numbers of Sunnis will be able to participate.

An election in which Sunnis were not well represented would probably fuel the insurgency and endanger the rights of minorities because there would be proportionately fewer voices from minority groups in the transitional assembly that would oversee the writing of a new constitution for the country.

Brahimi was careful to leave the door open to proceeding with the election and called on the international community and the Americans “to help clean up this mess. If you let it deteriorate, the situation will become even more dangerous.”

Robert Callahan, a spokesman in Baghdad for U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte, said Brahimi’s comments “are not going to sway us.”

But Callahan minimized differences with Brahimi, noting that U.S. officials would agree that three of the 18 provinces were troubled areas, “but we think we can improve the situation.... We have two months to improve the security situation.”

The reality on the ground, however, raises serious questions about the ability of the U.S. military to defeat the insurgency in seven weeks.

Although last month’s offensive in Fallouja killed many insurgents, destroyed some of their weapons caches and eliminated the city as a haven, it also appeared to have speeded the spread of the insurgency to other cities, notably the northern city of Mosul, where there have been numerous attacks on Kurds and on Iraqi national guardsmen.

On Saturday, a car bomb plowed into a bus carrying Kurdish members of the Iraqi Facilities Protection Service from the city of Irbil to Mosul, said Saad Ahmed Bira, chief of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Mosul. He said 13 to 15 members of the force, which guards government installations, were killed. Medical authorities in Irbil put the number of dead at seven.

A group led by Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on an Islamist website, Reuters reported.

“A brave fighter from the martyrs’ brigade struck at a convoy of the apostate party of Kurdish agents,” said the statement from the Qaeda Organization for Jihad in Iraq.

The car bomb at the Karkh police station exploded about 9:30 in the morning, shattering windows in the neighboring Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction. The bomb injured dozens of people and damaged a second police building nearby.

Almost every window in the Housing Ministry building was shattered, and clouds of smoke and debris forced hundreds of people just starting their workday to leave their offices. Several people said they did not know when they would be able to return to work because of the damage.

Although there were reports that two bombs had exploded, witnesses said only one had.

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Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations and special correspondent Roaa Ahmed in Mosul contributed to this report.