WASHINGTON - The United Nations is expected to pick Hussain Shahristani, a Shi'ite Muslim nuclear scientist who spent 11 years in Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam Hussein, as premier of a new interim Iraqi government, US sources said on May 25.

A State Department official said Shahristani was one of three finalists being considered for the key post but other sources said Shahristani was expected to head the new caretaker government when the US hands over power on July 1.

Asked if UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi had made his choices, one source with close ties to the Bush administration said: "Shahristani for prime minister."

The State Department official said: "He is one of about three finalists who was being considered for prime minister. I do not know whether he was chosen and actually asked."

"It's pretty obvious it has to be a Shi'ite. It also has to be someone who is not seen to be beholden any particular faction or party and yet not be so much of a technocrat that he has no standing with the parties," he said.

Shahristani fits that profile, he added.

Another US source said he expected Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni Muslim and one-time Iraqi foreign minister, to be president.

Vice presidential choices are expected to be Ibrahim Jaafari, a medical doctor who is spokesman of the Dawa Party, and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, although it is unclear if Talabani would take the job, the source said.

Brahimi choices

The slate of leaders to head the interim government that will administer Iraq until elections planned for January 2005 is being put together by Brahimi, special envoy of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, with the close assistance of Robert Blackwill, President George W. Bush's special adviser on Iraq.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "Mr. Brahimi will make an announcement when he is ready. It is my understanding that he has not made a final decision on those recommendations at this time."

US ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte, who will be the new US ambassador in Baghdad after June 30, declined to comment when asked about Shahristani.

"What do you expect me to say? ... I can't, can't" comment, he told reporters at the State Department.

Brahimi "has talked to a lot of people", Negroponte said.

Shahristani was tortured and imprisoned by Saddam after refusing to work on Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.

In a February 2003 interview on CNN, Shahristani said the Iraqi president was hiding weapons of mass destruction underneath the ground in tunnels.

Bush cited Saddam's weapons of mass destruction as a prime reason for the Iraq war but none have been found.

In a January 2003 interview with Canadian Television, Shahristani criticized Bush's father for abandoning Iraq's Shi'ite population after the 1991 Gulf War when he urged them to rise up and overthrow Saddam.

Firm views

"If anybody expects these people to forget all these sufferings and welcome any invading force with open arms to come and loot their oil, I think they are terribly mistaken," Shahristani said in that interview.

More recently, in a February 2004 article in the Wall Street Journal, he sided with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, on the issue of elections and questioned whether Washington "understands the Iraqi reality".

At the United Nations, Annan briefed Security Council ambassadors on Brahimi's work, but gave no names of who would be in the new government.

Diplomats said they questioned Annan on how credible the list would be among 20 million Iraqis. They also suggested the new interim government should come to New York before a US-British drafted new Security Council resolution was adopted.

Asked if Brahimi's difficulties would delay an announcement by the end of May, Annan said, "We had indicated that our target date was the end of May, and obviously we are still working towards that date. I hope we will be able to meet that target."

The resolution presented to the Security Council members on May 24 is an integral part of Bush's plan for stabilizing Iraq and creating a democratic state there. Bush, facing plunging poll numbers at home in an election year, is striving to gain greater international support for that plan.

Complicated handover

Britain said on May 25 a planned interim Iraqi government will have final control over foreign troops, but Washington said its forces will be under US Command and do whatever necessary to protect themselves.

The apparent difference between the allies could complicate their efforts to secure UN Security Council endorsement for a June 30 handover in Iraq, particularly after France, Russia and China signalled they wanted changes to a draft resolution.

"The final political control (over foreign troops) remains with the Iraqi government. That's what the transfer of sovereignty means," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters in London.

But US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Washington news conference: "Ultimately... US forces remain under US command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves."

An official in US President George W. Bush's administration said the issue would be discussed with the interim government and added: "I think it can be worked out."

Adnan Pachachi, a senior member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, weighed in on Blair's side in a BBC TV interview: "It is our understanding that any operations will have to have the approval of the Iraq government."

(Agencies via Xinhua)