With Washington determined to keep the upper hand, France, Britain and other countries pushing for a UN role and a gaggle of fractious oppositon groups jockeying for position, Iraq's future is likely to remain complicated.

US President George W. Bush made reassurances Tuesday that Washington would not act unilaterally in rebuilding the country, pledging to work "with international institutions, including the United Nations".

But key members of Bush's administration -- angered at the UN Security Council's failure to support the war -- have balked at granting the world body a role as a power-broker in the region.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said recently that "having given life and blood to liberate Iraq," it was natural that the United States and Britain should take the lead in the country when the war is finished.

To that aim, retired US general Jay Garner has been working with a 200-strong staff out of offices in Kuwait over the past few months as director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) for Iraq, answerable to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When Baghdad is finally considered secure Garner is expected to move up to Baghdad to begin in earnest his task of overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq.

Iraq's notoriously fractious opposition groups have been split over Garner's role.

Sharif Ali Hussain, leader of the Monarchist Constitutional Movement (MCM), said in London Tuesday that it would not work with Garner.

"We are not under the command of the US," he said. "We won't participate in any appointed post under the command of Garner."

But the US-backed Iraqi National Congress has welcomed Garner's role.

The INC, led by Ahmad Chalabi, recently claimed to have sent hundreds of fighters to southern Iraq to join the US campaign against Saddam.

"We see it as a very positive sign," INC spokesman Feisal Chalabi told AFP.

"We do believe that the civil administration he (Garner) is setting up in Kuwait with Iraqis and some American experts is a serious commitment by the United States towards the Iraqi people, towards a future democratic Iraq.

"We do not see ORHA as any kind of military rule of Iraq."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said the UN must be allowed to play a key role as its "involvement does bring legitimacy, which is necessary for the country, for the region and for the peoples around the world".

France, one of the staunchest opponents of war, has again put itself at odds with the United States by insisting that the United Nations play the central role in overseeing reconstruction.

"It is up to the United Nations -- and it alone -- to take on the political, economic, humanitarian and administrative reconstruction of Iraq," French President Jacques Chirac has said.

Britain's prime minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally over Iraq, has also been pushing for a bigger role for the UN.

"We need to ... try and make sure that we have as representative a system of government as possible and that's something we need to work out with the UN," Blair told the BBC.

But Feisal Chalabi said the UN was too weak an organisation to play anything other than a humanitarian role in Iraq.

"The deep transformation that needs to be undertaken by the state is far too overwhelming for the bureaucratic UN to run."

Iraqi opposition groups, who have previously met in areas of northern Iraq outside Saddam's control, are likely to meet in the south for the first time in the coming days.

An ORHA official said that "Centcom (US Central Command) may assist in the logistics" of the meeting in Nasiriyah, adding that the meeting was unlikely to take place on Saturday.

SPACE.WIRE