He said the exact date would be fixed by a law which Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council is once again meeting late into the night to draft, having already missed a deadline of midnight on February 28th.



Elections can't come a moment too soon for the millions of Shia muslims who make up the majority of Iraq's population who fear that the longer the delay, the greater the chance of the country falling apart.



Thirteen hundred years ago, a Muslim holy man was beheaded by the army of a profligate tyrant in what's now the Iraqi desert.



The victim's name was Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.



As he faced his executioners, Hussein is said to have uttered the immortal words: "Death with dignity is better than a life of humiliation."



A martyr's mantra that's inspired Shia Islam down through the centuries.



"In every age, thousands of Shia die for the sake of Hussein. Those in the mass graves died for the sake of the revolution of Hussein. We learn from him not to surrender to injustice. Not to bow to the tyrant. We always challenge injustice."



JAWAD AL-HASSAB

Director, "Hussein, Revolutionary & Martyr"



Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraq's Shia muslims were murdered by Saddam Hussein. After they rose up against him thirteen years ago, he banned their annual Ashurah pilgrimage to Holy City of Kerbala, the site in the desert where his namesake, Hussein, was beheaded. Now Saddam's gone, they're coming back. By the million.



They come to grieve for Hussein and to rededicate themselves at his shrine to the search for justice. In post-Saddam Iraq that means political justice.



Centuries of oppression by Sunni Muslim rulers ended with the US-led invasion. Now, Iraq's Shia majority is restless.



"We are afraid that democracy will not come to Iraq. If we felt that by waiting another five or even ten years, democracy would come to Iraq, we would wait. But our assessment of conditions in Iraq is that the country is living through a series of crises and these crises could explode in a way that would prevent us having even a unified independent state."



MUHAMMED TAKI AL-MUDARRASSI

Grand Ayatollah







We put the Ayatollah's concerns to Britain's senior representative in Baghdad.



Channel 4 News : "Do you believe that the CPA understands fully the importance of having a firm timetable to guide this process and to give it credibility?"





Sir Jeremy Greenstock : "Elections are going to happen before March next year. Anyone who listens to what is going on understands that those dates are being set. This law that we are drafting will set them more firmly. Things need to be paced so that democracy works properly and isn't a rushed job."



To many Shia, such assurances from their occupiers will sound more like excuses for lack of action. Suicide bombers are striking somewhere every few days at the moment. Two-hundred and thirty killed in February alone.



In Najaf, Iraq's other great holy city, a huge car bomb exploded last August and killed Iraq's most prominent Shia politician and 85 other worshipers as they left Friday prayers.



We met with the spokesman of a firebrand cleric called Moqtada al-Sadr. They're really impatient. We want the Americans out now, he says. The Americans are quite happy to have al-Qaeda or the Taliban running roughshod all over Iraq, he tells me, just as long as they're safe, back home. It suits them to keep Iraq insecure.



Even mainstream religious leaders worry that the Americans are giving in to the bombers and they shudder at the prospect.



"If the people become suspicious and disturbances break out in Iraq and, let's say, the Shia begin to resist, all our hopes and dreams will be destroyed. Frankly, the Americans have a big problem: they are worried that elections may lead to an extreme Islamic government in Iraq, allied to Iran. This is the real American fear. We must all work to put in place some principles, or guarantees, to ensure that this fear does not become a reality. We are ready to cooperate on this."



MUHAMMED TAKI AL-MUDARRASSI

Grand Ayatollah



We crossed into the “Death Zone”. Behind razor wire, sandbags, bunkers and blast walls, live those who run the coalition HQ, Kerbala. The local American big man was suicide bombed out of his downtown office two months ago and has been on the receiving end of several mortar and small arms attacks since then. Still, he insists, he gets into his armoured car with his bodyguards every day and goes out to talk to the Iraqis that matter. Ayatollahs?



"No, I can't say that I've had an opportunity to pay a call on an Ayatollah but then to tell you the truth, I don't need to. Um, because the Ayatollahs, because I don't have much of an opportunity to because by and large most of the Ayatollahs live in Najaf or else they live in Iran."

John Berry

Coalition Provisional Authority, Kerbala



As millions of Shia commemorate the massacre in Kerbala of Hussein and his companions in 680AD, many will remember more recent horrors in Kerbala's killing fields.



In 1991, Saddam brutally crushed a Shia rebellion inspired by George Bush senior. The joy of liberation hasn't healed the wounds of that betrayal. Their worst fear now is that promises of freedom and democracy might turn, yet again, to blood and tears.