Baghdad, May 05: A council of up to nine Iraqis will probably lead the country's interim government through the coming months, the American civil administrator said today even as the US military announced the arrest of a former Iraqi intelligence chief. The US army had no details on Adil Salfeg al-Azarui, the onetime top spy for Saddam Hussein's government and an official in the ousted leader's Baath party. Al-Azarui, who is not on the US list of 55 most-wanted former Iraqi officials, was once the mayor of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. Iraq's US administrator, retired Lt Gen Jay Garner, said he expected a small group of leaders to take the reins of post-Saddam Iraq. Such a notion had been discussed last week at a political meeting in Baghdad. "What you may see is as many as seven, eight, nine leaders working together to provide leadership," Garner said.
"By the middle of the month, you'll really see a beginning of a nucleus of an Iraqi government with an Iraqi face on it that is dealing with the coalition." Iraqi faction leaders and US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said they would meet again in coming weeks and hoped to form an interim government early next month. The Iraqi leaders Garner referred to were Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party; Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress; Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord; and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, whose elder brother heads the Shiite group Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Bureau Report