After insisting for months that Iraqis must determine their future under a kind of passive American supervision, the Bush administration is being forced to take sides in several Iraqi disputes and running into friction with groups long friendly to Washington.
How these new confrontations are resolved will probably determine the staying power and effectiveness of Iraq's future government and, ultimately, even its territorial integrity after the United States transfers sovereignty to Baghdad.
Among the difficulties are the American efforts, so far unsuccessful, to convince a leading Shiite cleric of the legitimacy of the administration's plan to transfer sovereignty to Iraq on June 30, and American wrangling with Islamic groups over the role of Islam in Iraq's laws and constitution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/politics/09DIPL.html