"Power in Iraq must pass to the hands of the Iraqis, who must assume their responsibility" at the end of the war launched on March 20 by Washington and London to oust President Saddam Hussein's regime, Sadok al-Shirazi said in a statement.

Shirazi, speaking in Kuwait to religious leaders, and members of Iraq's tribes and opposition groups, said the "tragedies and dramas" suffered by the Iraqi people were the result of Iraq's leaders falling from the "fair path of Islam."

The new administration in Iraq should be established on "principles of freedom and consultation according to Islamic norms, a multiparty system and free enterprise," said Shirazi, whom an Iraqi court sentenced to death in absentia after he fled to Kuwait.

"After the fall of the regime," Shirazi's family, some of whom live in the Iranian city of Qom, will return to "restore their religious authority in Karbala," the southern holy Iraqi city, the statement added.

SPACE.WIRE