Kurdistan Observer

An Islamist Iraqi opposition leader said on Saturday the Iraqi people would take power if the international community prevented President Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction

But Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, the Iran-based leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), stopped short of saying he backed the use of Western air power or ground forces to topple Saddam.

"It is the duty of the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam," Hakim told Reuters in an interview at his heavily guarded Tehran compound. "This is the duty of the Iraqi people, it is not duty of any other side or country.

"The Iraqi people can make the change if the international community prevents the Iraqi regime from using weapons of mass destruction," he said.

U.S. President George W. Bush said earlier this month he would use all tools at his disposal to topple Saddam.

Hakim fled Iraq before the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

"The Iraqi regime killed all my teachers,... five of my brothers and eight of my brothers' sons, 50 percent of my tribe, neighbours, friends," he said.

TALKS WITH WASHINGTON, KURDS

Despite their misgivings about Hakim's Iranian hosts, branded by Bush part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, Washington has talked with the SCIRI over Iraq's future.

"I personally did not meet any American official, but some SCIRI representatives have met the Americans," said Hakim.

Hakim is careful not to offend his hosts but fellow Iraqi opposition leaders say the bearded and black-turbaned Shi'ite Muslim cleric is more moderate than the clergy in power in Iran.

Iranian leaders, while no friends of Saddam, are extremely edgy about a possible U.S. military presence in Iraq to the west to match that in Afghanistan to the east.

Hakim said U.S. officials had not discussed any military cooperation with his band of a few thousand fighters whose power base is in the mainly Shi'ite southern marshlands, nor had they let him in on their plans.

"I have no specific information on their intentions," he said.

Nevertheless, Hakim said he was coordinating his efforts with the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties who control much of the mountainous north of the country and last week held talks in Tehran with the leader of one of the groups, Jalal Talabani.

"We discussed the necessity of the unity of Iraq... and the establishment of the future government," he said.

Hakim said he had agreed with Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Talabani to call for a meeting of all the many Iraqi opposition groups, possibly in Europe, in the near future.

Talabani's PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani have had a de-facto independence from Baghdad since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

The Kurdish groups favour a federal future for Iraq with autonomy for the north. Neighbouring countries and Iraq's Arab majority fear autonomy might lead to the break-up of Iraq.

"The future government should be multidimensional," said Hakim. "The government will be elected by the people and will represent the whole people and their characteristics, ethnic, religious and political."

As for when that government would take shape: "It is in the hands of God," said a smiling Hakim, shrugging his shoulders.