Washington ? The Bush administration is abandoning its 3-month-old plan to select a new Iraqi government through a complex caucus system in the face of overwhelming opposition from the leading Shiite cleric and other Iraqis, senior U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Instead, the administration, which is intent on sticking to the June 30 date for ending the American occupation of Iraq, is leaning toward handing over power by then to an interim, unelected body, officials said.

One possibility under discussion is to turn over sovereignty to an expanded version of the 25-member Iraq Governing Council, an American-appointed body that many Iraqis hold in low regard.

The development marks another major policy adjustment for the Bush administration in its efforts to install a stable, post-Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. It would rewrite a hard-won Nov. 15 agreement between U.S. administrator Paul Bremer and Governing Council members.

The new plan, the details of which are still to be settled, represents a compromise with the Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al Sistani, the Shiite cleric who has demanded national elections to choose a new government.

U.S. officials countered that elections would be impossible to organize by June 30. United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who just returned from Iraq, is expected to agree when he reports later this week and instead propose elections in late 2004 or early next year.

“What we’re talking about is an interim government to whom sovereignty will be transferred until such time as you can have a full constitution in place and that you can have a full election, which nobody believes is possible by June, but at some point in the future,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday.

“Whether it’s the end of this year or sometime next year remains to be determined,” Powell said.

Another U.S. official said elections are unlikely to take place until after the U.S. presidential elections in November.

Some of the officials requested anonymity because they spoke without authorization from the Bush administration.

It remains to be seen whether a temporary, unelected government, either based on the Governing Council or some other formula, can stabilize the country and deal with its myriad problems.

Many Iraqi intellectuals, while harboring disdain for the council, say they’d rather see the country in Iraqi hands than delay the June 30 deadline for the transfer of authority.

U.S. soldiers hand out candy to Iraqi children in a Baghdad, Iraq, neighborhood on Tuesday, the same day U.S. officials acknowledged they would abandon a plan to select a new Iraqi government through a complex caucus system.