Boys, with pictures of Shia cleric Ali Sistani hanging around their necks, play in Sadr City, Baghdad. (AFP)

Baghdad, June 4 (Reuters): Iraq named a team today to organise its first free elections in January, the next step in establishing its independence from US military occupation.

Within an hour, the 600th American soldier to die in action in Iraq was killed in Baghdad, underscoring the threat to Iraq’s first free elections from such violence.

Carina Perelli, a UN elections expert, said naming seven members to the Electoral Commission and a chief elections officer was “one step further in the right direction along the road towards a democratic, sovereign, free and peaceful Iraq”.

It came three days after the UN, called in by Washington to help oversee a transition from occupation to Iraqi rule, nominated an interim government and a new President.

The new government told the UN it wanted the right to decide on the presence of US-led forces and other security issues but very much wanted troops to stay for now.

Foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari told the UN Security Council in New York that Baghdad wanted US-led forces to stay, under the terms of a US-British draft resolution on the planned US handover of power to Iraqis on June 30.

“I stress that any premature departure of international troops would lead to chaos and the real possibility of a civil war in Iraq,” Zebari said.

In his first televised speech as Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi told Iraqis today that life would improve if they stood up against guerrillas and put the U.S. occupation and Saddam Hussein behind them.

Najaf pullback

Rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and US forces agreed to withdraw their forces from Najaf under a truce deal aimed at ending weeks of fighting, the city’s governor said today. “All the warring parties should leave the two holy cities and not allow any of their members to enter,” Najaf governor Adnan Zurfi said.