"We don't want to get carried away. We have to wait and see what is happening and find out where Saddam is," INC spokesman Ahmed Agha al-Chalabi told AFP in London.

"I think they (the Iraqi regime) all moved back from Baghdad. They all went back to the Hamrin mountains and that area around Tikrit. In that area they have hidden bunkers, hidden weaponry," he said.

Saddam was born in the village of Ouja, on the outskirts of Tikrit, a provincial capital on the Tigris river 170 kilometers (105 miles) north of the Iraqi capital.

"We cannot say it is the end of the Iraqi regime unless we see the big heads, who are in charge of the regime, captured or killed," said al-Chalabi, reacting to live TV images of jubilant and looting Iraqis in Baghdad.

Members of Iraqi opposition groups, including the INC, are to meet in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Saturday, its organizer Ghassan Atiyyah said in London on Tuesday.

Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon-backed leader of the INC, a coalition of anti-Saddam groups including Islamists, communists and nationalists, is gearing up for a major role in post-war and is already in Nasiriyah.

On US television last Sunday, he said US forces should remain in Iraq for at least two years, the time it would take for the opposition to get a post-Saddam constitution in place.

The Iraqi opposition has given a firm message that they would not accept a "new dictatorship" in their country, and that an interim government should be put in place as soon as possible.

Ahmed Agha al-Chalabi, the INC spokesman in London, said the Iraqi opposition should be given the task of restoring order in towns and cities plagued by widespread looting as the regime's infrastructure collapses.

"We have organised fighters, we have organised groups who can really go and take over the authority before a transitional period inside Iraq," he told AFP in a telephone interview.

"The British and the United States can always help but they can not really take over the policing and control" of urban centres, he said.

He said Saturday's meeting in Nasiriyah would focus on "organising groups to restore control in the cities."

SPACE.WIRE