In Anbar province, he added, there was a demand for elections.
As Gates set out on his mission, she was in Yemen, one of her stops on an extensive tour of the Gulf states, to drum up Islamic backing for her nation's demand for elections in Kashmir.
In assuming the presidency while remaining army chief of staff and chief executive, the 57-year-old general said he planned "no change in the intention" to follow the court's demand for elections, which he described as "very clear".
Adel Abdel Mahdi, a representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shiite Muslim political party said the proposal would also satisfy, for now, Shiite demands for elections to any body that drafts a constitution.
In past months, the general has sloughed off demands for elections, saying there were more important tasks at hand, like forestalling national bankruptcy and collecting unpaid bank loans owed by a legion of wealthy deadbeats.
Another candidate, the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, echoed Mr. Moussavi's demand for the election to be canceled.
A letter from Mr. Moussavi published on one of his Web sites late Saturday repeated his demand for the election to be annulled.
"It is clear our demand for new elections still stands," the Left Green party leader, Katrin Jakobsdottir, said.
On April 23rd red-shirt protesters, who are camped out in Bangkok's shopping district, revised their demand for snap elections, saying a three-month timetable was acceptable.
Instead it buried the demand for direct elections to LegCo as the fifth sub-option of the fourth main option in chapter four.
