BAGHDAD, Iraq ?Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the head of a religious party who fought Saddam Hussein and took refuge in Iran for more than a decade, was chosen on February 22 as the Shi¡¯ite ticket¡¯s candidate for prime minister.

He must first build a ruling coalition and win agreement from the Kurds and others on candidates for cabinet posts and the presidency before seeking the support of a majority of the new National Assembly elected on January 30.

It will not be easy for the 58-year-old physician from the holy Shi¡¯ite city of Karbala. He¡¯ll have to meet conflicting demands from Kurds, Sunnis and even Islamic hard-liners in his own United Iraqi Alliance.

Ayad Allawi, the secular Shi¡¯ite interim prime minister whose party received just 13.8 per cent of the election votes, could be tapped for a cabinet post but has his own demands for co-operation.

¡°If they meet our demands, then we don¡¯t care about what ministerial post we get. Even if we were offered a post, we wouldn¡¯t accept it unless the demands are met,?Emad Shabeb, senior member of Allawi¡¯s party said.

Allawi has staunchly opposed de-Baathification ?the effort to rid the government and administration of former members of Saddam Hussein¡¯s Baath party.

The Shi¡¯ites have said they also intend to bring Sunni leaders into the administration to help smooth relations with the Sunni minority, alienated after the fall of Saddam and participating in the insurgency in Iraq.

Ahmad Chalabi could also prove a headache, despite dropping out of the running for the alliance nomination after three days of round-the-clock bargaining. His surprise showing has restored Chalabi to Iraq¡¯s political elite after he fell from grace following accusations from Washington that he supplied Iran with classified information.

Wanted in Jordan for bank fraud, Chalabi was said to be angling for the post of deputy prime minister in charge of finance and security.

¡°Tomorrow morning we will start a move in other directions, to choose the cabinet after we reached a conclusion internally about the three presidency posts,?said alliance spokesman Humam Hamoudi. ¡°As for the ministries, we are still talking and we have time.?

According to the interim constitution adopted last year under the US occupation, the 275-member National Assembly must elect a new president and two vice-presidents by a two-thirds majority, or 182 seats. The three must then unanimously choose a prime minister subject to assembly approval.

There is no timetable for the assembly to convene and al-Jaafari and his alliance must agree with other disparate elected parties on who will fill the three largely ceremonial posts and the cabinet. Even then, the prime minister has a full month to name his cabinet before the assembly vote.

¡°We respect the choice of the alliance for al-Jaafari, but we will not give a premature opinion about that choice unless we negotiate with him on our demands,?said Noshirwan Mustafa, the second ranking official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

He said demands include a new constitution that will legalize Kurdish self-rule in the north. Kurds, which make up 15 per cent of the population, also want an end to what they call ¡°Arabization?of Kirkuk and other northern regions where former leader Saddam Hussein relocated Iraqi Arabs in a bid to secure control of the oil fields there.

¡°The Kurds will not ally with any nominee for the prime ministerial post unless he meets their demands,?Mustafa said.

The Kurds have already said they want Jalal Talabani, a secular Sunni Kurd and leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to be Iraq¡¯s next president.

Al-Jaafari is a top leader in the Islamic Dawa Party, one of the main Shi¡¯ite parties in the clergy-backed alliance.

He fled Iraq in 1980 during a crackdown by Saddam¡¯s forces against a bloody Dawa Party uprising that began in the late 1970s and was crushed in 1982. The group said it lost 77,000 members in wars against Saddam.

From Iran, where he remained until 1990, al-Jaafari is believed to have orchestrated a series of cross border attacks against Iraqi forces while studying Shi¡¯ite theology in the holy city of Qom.

He was seen as the leader of a pro-Teheran faction of Dawa with close ties to Iran¡¯s clerical government, though he denies any such links.

¡°This is just a widespread, mistaken belief,?al-Jaafari told The AP.

The decision to nominate al-Jaafari came after a meeting at a heavily fortified building in central Baghdad, a city still recovering from a slew of attacks and suicide bombings over the weekend that killed nearly 100 people. (Agencies via Xinhua)