POTENTIAL LEADERS FOR POST-WAR IRAQ

U.S. and Britain - The U.S. has established the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance to help run Iraq after the war. This will be controlled by General Jay Garner who will report to General Tommy Franks. General Garner's responsibility will be to handle immediate problems such as providing water, food, shelter, law enforcement and medical care to the Iraqi citizens. The U.S. has said that the leaders of the coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein should play the largest role in efforts to rebuild the country.

United Nations - Since 1945, the primary goals of the U.N have been keeping world peace, cultivating friendly relationships among nations and promoting human rights and freedoms.

Countries who were opposed to the war, such as France, believe the United Nations should have the central role. According to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, "The U.N. is the only international organization that can give legitimacy'' to Iraq's reconstruction.

Iraqi Exiles:

The Iraq National Congress In the days following the defeat of Iraq in 1991, a wave of opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime staged uprisings in northern and southern Iraq. A number of Iraqi coalitions formed alliances and so began a series of meetings in the Middle East and Europe to establish a plan of action to remove Saddam Hussein from office.

The group is an ethnic and religious mix of Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and Christians and maintains its headquarters in Salahuddin with an external base in London.

INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has been mentioned as a potential successor if Saddam is ousted. Chalabi has said he does not want to head a provisional government but will continue to support the U.S. campaign to oust Hussein.

Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) led by Ayatollah Mohammed Bakral-Hakim, an Iraqi Shiite exile. Most Shiites, long oppressed by the Saddam regime, favor a more religious government.

Kurdish Opposition in Northern Iraq The Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are the two major Kurdish opposition parties operating within northern Iraq. The two groups are composed of about 40,000 troops, making them the largest armed group opposed to Saddam Hussein. Massoud Barzani is the leader of the K.D.P., and Jalal Talabani is the chief of the P.U.K.

Ethnic Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslim, they speak their own language and comprise 22 million people in 6 countries - 10 million in Turkey, 5.5 million in Iran, 3.5 million in Iraq and pockets of population in Syria, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The Ba'ath Party is the party of Saddam Hussein. Its main ideological objectives are secularism, socialism, and pan-Arab unionism. All Ba'ath leaders have pledged allegiance to Saddam, but they know how things ran before the war.