And all for the love of his country

It would appear a job many a president, prime minister, monarch and dictator of more modestly endowed nations would give their first born for, as Iraq has the largest oil reserves in the world and the potential to be rich beyond belief.

Whoever fills the post will have the approval of the most powerful nation on earth, the sympathy of the western world and, if not back-slapping goodwill, then at least respect from his nearest neighbours.

Who could be worthy of such a privileged position and, more importantly, who wants it? The most obvious contender is Dr Ahmed Chalabi, but for several years now he has been solidly denying any desire to be his native country's next leader.

"My role ends with the liberation of Iraq," has been his staple comment on prime time current affairs programmes and in newspaper interviews the world over, so much so that questioning him about his ambitions has become almost irrelevant.

But the very fact that he has been the face and voice of Iraqi opposition in a three million strong diaspora whose dominant characteristic has been fear of expressing an opinion, makes him the one the west point to as the most likely new man in charge.

Besides, it wouldn't do to seem too keen, and if protestations of disinterest are what it takes to avoid being viewed as power-hungry a trait too Saddamist for comfort then Chalabi will probably protest all the way to the leader's office.

Chalabi, now 58, has leadership in his blood, passed on through his grandfather, a member of parliament in the 1920s, and his father, a wealthy grain importer, who also became an MP and senator and was head of the Senate when the King was assassinated in the coup of 1958.

In the turmoil that followed, the Chalabis fled to England where the then 13-year-old Ahmed was packed off to boarding school in an experience that should have turned him into the consummate cricket-playing chappie, but instead seems only to have reinforced his ties with home.

He went on to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and in Chicago, majoring in mathematics, but, as soon as he could, he returned to the Middle East, getting a teaching post at the American University in Beirut.

Although a gifted scholar, he abandoned academia for entrepreneurship and moved to Jordan where, in 1977, he founded the Bank of Petra which went on to become the second biggest bank in the country.

The Bank of Petra is where the controversy that today surrounds Chalabi begins. The Bank collapsed in 1990 after being stormed by the army amidst claims of embezzlement and massive losses.

Chalabi fled to Britain protesting his innocence as a victim of a Baghdad-inspired conspiracy (by no means an incredible explanation even if it may never be fully verified) and two years later he was tried in his absence and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Kick up enough dust and some of it will linger to cloud the truth and it was clear Chalabi, even with British citizenry to protect him, would never bank again.

In 1992, with time on his hands and frustration welling up over Saddam's survival of the Gulf War, he turned his life- long passion for Iraqi freedom into a full-time pursuit.

He was the prime mover in setting up the London- based Iraqi National Congress (INC) and spent the next 10 years lobbying western governments and other anti-Saddam groups for support in planning his overthrow.

In that decade he conducted a tenuous love affair with successive administrations in the US. Initially critical of what he saw as George Bush Senior's unfinished job in Iraq in 1991, he nonetheless knew the importance of tapping into America's enmity of Saddam and was quick to court Bill Clinton when he took over the White House in 1992.

Bill let him down too, however, by belatedly refusing to back a Chalabi-inspired, and ultimately doomed, uprising in northern Iraq in 1995.

Chalabi swallowed his anger eventually, though, and when the Clinton administration brought in the Iraqi Liberation Act 1998, declaring it US policy to assist democratic groups in working against Saddam, it was Chalabi's INC that became the main beneficiary.

The Act liberated almost $100 million in financial support for the cause but little of it was ever put to use, and elements within the new Bush administration were almost gleeful when it was discovered some $2 million had gone on questionable essentials such as gym membership. Funding was stopped.

Chalabi has further provoked glowers from some of Bush's men by being openly close to Iran and declaring in recent days that the US has no place in a post-war Iraqi interim administration.

But better the devil you know and the US knows Chalabi as a straight-talker who lets people know where they stand.

"We are difficult allies for the US," he stated bluntly last year.

In his favour, the married father of four both knows the west well, loves the east dearly, and has clearly inspired his Harvard educated daughter, Tamara, who has a doctorate in middle-eastern politics.

He is also from Shi'ite Muslim stock, the country's largest religious group, while Saddam's regime was dominated by Sunnis. It is noted that the US-appointed chairman of Afghanistan's interim authority, Hamid Karzai, is Pashtun that country's biggest, but previously under-represented, ethnic group.

Chalabi wears the cloak of a man set on unity and equality within Iraq and his proposal for an interim authority comprises representatives of the two main Kurdish political organisations, the INC and the Tehran-based Supreme Islamic Revolutionary Council of Iraq.

There are, however, at least 50 listed opposition groups in, and in exile from, Iraq and whoever seeks to lead the country will need a large pot of super- strength glue to keep them all together.

A meeting between the main groups and senior US diplomats was set for today but with the streets of the country's cities in looter-filled chaos, Tuesday is now considered a more realistic date.

Already, it seems, events are serving as a warning that, in Iraq, the best laid plans and most capable leaders can quickly come unstuck.