Iraqi police cars accompanied by two US marine Humvees fanned out from the local police academy and rolled through the capital hit by widespread looting when Saddam's regime collapsed on Wednesday.

Some 200 Iraqi officers, stripped of their pistols by the marines, reported for duty at the academy on Monday and heard a pep talk by their chief, General Mohammed al-Bandar.

"Treat citizens as if they were your brothers, your friends," he told his men. "The citizen must feel the change, now we are in a democracy."

Iraqi policemen also began Monday to man checkpoints with British soldiers in the southern port city of Basra in a bid to tackle a crime wave that accompanied Saddam's fall.

The joint patrols in Baghdad were a gesture to calm a citizenry becoming increasingly anxious about their future as well as angry over continued lawlessness and a lack of basic services.

For the second day hundreds of Iraqis milled in front of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad where the Americans set up an operations base. Anger and frustration mixed with hope of finding a role in their US-occupied country.

Some 300 people, chanting slogans and brandishing handwritten signs that read "Where is our future?" or "We want security" and "We want a clean Iraq" pressed close to the barbed-wire entrance of the hotel.

About a dozen marines, their M-16s held at the ready, looked on edgily. Others stood watch from atop an amphibious vehicle while the crowd vented its fury at what it saw as inadequate US efforts to restore normalcy.

Five days after the collapse of Saddam's regime, life returned slowly to this capital of five million people. Traffic jams again snarled central Baghdad and if most shops remained closed, grocery stands started to open.

But still there was little word on the transitional arrangements for a new administration or when Iraqis would see some measure of security and stability.

A firefight in the northern Baghdad suburb of Saddam City between Iraqi combatants and Arab volunteers who had come to help the Iraqi army against the US-British invaders left two dead, Iraqi participants said.

Renamed Al-Sadr City by residents of the impoverished community of two million, it has been the site of pitched battles nearly everyday since Baghdad fell to US troops.

Like most areas of the capital, Al-Sadr has been deprived of water and power for more than a week. The imams of local mosques appear to be the only authority, with no visible presence of US troops.

Iraqis were also becoming impatient with the remoteness of their American occupiers, who huddled behind well-guarded checkpoints and held meetings in hotel offices off-limits to average citizens.

"There is no one to talk to. There is no way we can communicate," said Ali Abdul Hadi, a 42-year-old former policeman. "We are not angry but we want the police to return. We want to feel safe."

Other Iraqis checked in their pride at the front gate of the Palestine Hotel as they came virtually begging for work or help from the Americans in tracking down lost relatives.

Hassan Jaber has a degree in economics but was ready to hire himself out as a driver or translator. Ayad Abed Ismail tried to talk his way past the marines showing a plastic employee card -- he was once the hotel's personnel manager.

With US forces in control of the center of Saddam's last stronghold of Tikrit and the war virtually over, more attention focused on the awesome task of rebuilding the battered country.

If the Iraqis are feeling desperate about their economic plight after three wars and more than 12 years of UN-imposed sanctions, they are also wary of US moves to form an indigenous government.

US officials were to chair a meeting Tuesday of once-exiled Iraqi opposition members and a variety of other anti-Saddam figures near the southern city of Nasiriyah, the first in a series of promised forums.

But some Iraqis see Washington as intent on setting up the former exiles in power, a fear fueled by the attention given to Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, now head of the Free Iraqi Forces.

Ali Karim al-Kaabi, who said he was a former squadron leader in the Iraqi air force, said he was not interested in seeing the exiled opposition return to assume power.

"They enjoyed themselves in London while we ate garbage here," he hissed. "We are the ones who suffered."

SPACE.WIRE