Iraqi leaders said yesterday in Baghdad they want to start immediately on planning elections, after the United Nations estimated that it would take eight months to organize a nationwide ballot.

　　In the meantime, UN officials must offer a new method for choosing the provisional government due to take power from the US-led coalition on June 30, a prominent Shiite Muslim party said.

　　Shiites led the push for having elections before the handover date, but the UN report issued on Monday ruled an early vote unfeasible.

　　"If there is no election ... then who is going to take over sovereignty from the Coalition Authority? The Iraqi people need to know," said Hamed al-Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which holds a seat in the current, temporary Iraq administration organized by the United States.

　　But the United Nations believes it's up to the Iraqis to come up with a formula for establishing a provisional government.

　　UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said on Monday the world body, if asked, would help come up with an alternative to the original American plan to pick a new government using regional caucuses, a formula that Iraq's powerful Shiite clergy rejected as illegitimate and that now most of the 25-member Governing Council opposes.

　　Council members discussed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report yesterday and will probably make a formal response in a few days, according to Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish Sunni member.

　　"It is likely that the response will include a request for UN help," Othman added.

　　Elsewhere, a roadside bomb exploded yesterday as a US military convoy passed in the central city of Baqouba, damaging a Humvee vehicle and wounding four soldiers, witnesses said.

　　Yesterday in Tokyo, Annan said the UN will not risk a repeat of last year's attack in Iraq by establishing a full presence unless security there was improved.

　　Speaking before the Japanese Parliament and to reporters, Annan said the UN was ready to assist Iraqi authorities set up an interim government, arrange elections and draft a constitution.

　　But the UN presence will remain light until the country becomes safer for his staff, said Annan, who pulled all non-Iraqi UN workers out of the country last year after devastating suicide bombings at the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

　　"Security must be improved. Otherwise I risk repeating the experience of 19 August," Annan told the Japan Press Club, referring to the date when a truck bomb against the UN's Iraqi headquarters in Baghdad killed 22, including top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

　　Annan also emphasized that it should be the Iraqis themselves who choose an interim government, and he refused to publicly endorse the US-backed plan of expanding the Washington-picked Iraqi Governing Council.

　　"What is important is that Iraqis take the lead," Annan said.

　　(The Associated Press)