Scientist tipped to be Iraqi premier

IRAQ: The UN envoy to Iraq, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, is expected to name on June 1st an Iraqi transitional administration consisting of a president, two vice-presidents, an executive prime minister and 26 ministers. While negotiations are still taking place with the four principal figures, their names have been released.

The executive prime ministerial post is to go to Dr Hussein Shahristani (62), a nuclear scientist who holds degrees from London and Toronto universities. He was a member of Iraq's nuclear research programme until Saddam Hussein launched a weapons programme in response to Israel's attack on the Osirak reactor in 1982.

After refusing to join the programme, Dr Shahristani was arrested and imprisoned at Abu Ghraib where he was tortured. He remained in detention until 1991 when he escaped with his family to Kurdistan. He left Iraq through Turkey and took up residence in London where he became a visiting professor but kept his distance from Iraqi opposition groups.

During the US war on Iraq, he returned to the south where he engaged in humanitarian work in Basra and Kerbala. Although it is widely reported that he is an adviser to Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the current kingmaker in Iraq, Dr Shahristani denies this. However, he agrees with the ayatollah's demand for democracy and early elections as well as the need for a foreign military presence in the country until the situation is stabilised.

The largely ceremonial posts of president and vice-president will be filled by members of the interim Governing Council appointed last July by the US chief administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, whose post will be dissolved on June 30th when hand-over to the transitional government takes place.

Dr Adnan Pachachi (81), Iraq's only major statesman, has long been slated for the presidency. Dr Pachachi, who served as his country's foreign minister until the Ba'ath Party assumed full power in 1968, is a moderate secular Sunni Muslim.

He established his Independent Democrat Party last May after returning to Iraq from the United Arab Emirates where he served as the adviser on Iraqi affairs to the President, Sheikh Zayed al-Nahyan. Over the past year, Dr Pachachi has been sharply critical of US policies and has gained a certain amount of popular respect.

Dr Ibrahim Jaafari, a physician and the spokesman of the Shia Islamist Dawa Party, is to be appointed to a vice-presidential post. According to the latest poll of Iraqi opinion, Dr Jaafari is the second most popular figure in the country after Ayatollah Sistani, who commands the support of the majority Shia community. He is seen as a moderate who can work comfortably with Iraq's other religious and ethnic communities.

Mr Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish chieftain who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has been offered the other vice-presidential post but is dickering on terms. A law graduate of Baghdad University, he speaks both Kurdish and Arabic. His group broke away several decades ago from the main Kurdish separatist movement, the Kurdish Democratic Party, now led by Mr Massoud Barzani, the son of its legendary founder, Mullah Mustafa Barzani. Mr Talabani is seen as a more staunch supporter of the US than Mr Barzani.

The new council of ministers is expected to retain Mr Ali Alawi, the current holder of the all-important defence portfolio, who is closely connected with the Iraqi National Accord, a group of renegade Ba'athist military officers allied to the US.