Line-up of likely contenders to take over post-Saddam

The Iraqi National Congress (INC): Founded in 1992 as an umbrella group for other exiled opposition groups, the INC has since faced claims it acts unilaterally as its own party.

It supported a report by a US-backed working group of Iraqis which recommends establishing a "transitional authority" before any strike on Saddam Hussein.

That authority would double in size once established in Iraq and would oversee democratic elections to choose a new government, while

protecting the rights of the many different political and ethnic factions within Iraq's 22 million population. The Iraqi National Accord (INA): Mostly made up of military and security force defectors, the INA traditionally supported the idea the US should foster a coup from within the Iraqi army.

The INA was set up in 1990 by Shiite Muslim Ayad Alawi, a former Iraqi official who defected from Baghdad and moved to London.

It is rumoured to have had financial backing from the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Britain, and both the INA and INC were said to have been earmarked for US funding in 1998.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI): SCIRI's spiritual and political leader Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim is based in Tehran and the group has backing from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It has claimed to have a guerrilla network inside Iraq and western sources have estimated its strength as between 7,000 and 15,000 men.

Traditionally, SCIRI has not supported a US strike on Iraq and is historically unwilling to work with America, saying regime change should happen from within Iraq.

SCIRI is mostly made up of exiled members of Iraq's majority Shia community, which makes up about 60% of the Iraqi population.

It wants to see the end of the traditional dominance of the ruling Sunni Muslims.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK): These are the two main Kurdish parties and operate in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR) in northern Iraq.

Since the 1991 Gulf War they have held elections and formed a semi-independent power-sharing group but old rivalries have surfaced, including in 1996 when the KDP allegedly invited Iraqi troops into the region in a bid to seize control of PUK territory.

Some US officials have suggested using the Kurds who make up around 19% of the Iraqi population in a similar role to that of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

But that would be opposed by Turkey, which fears the Kurds would use such a role to establish an independent state, thus setting a precedent for Turkey's 12 million Kurds.

And the Kurdish parties are seen as reluctant to jeopardise the comparative freedoms they have enjoyed since 1991, when Western troops forced Iraqi soldiers out of the KAR and created a security zone, patrolled by British and US planes in the no-fly ones.

The KAR was set up in the 1970s but Saddam unleashed chemical weapons on thousands of the villages in 1988 because of increased guerrilla activities during his eight-year war with neighbouring Iran.

The two groups are now reported to have some 40,000 troops between them, making them the biggest armed threat to Saddam inside Iraq.

PUK leader Jalal Talabani is a law graduate who started his political life within the KDP but joined a splinter group over differences with the then KDP leader Mustafa Barzani.

Barzani's son Massoud Barzani leads the KDP and the political rivalry between the two men has fuelled antagonism between their parties, leading to armed confrontations including the so-called fratricide war of 1994.

They eventually signed a peace agreement in Washington in 1998. The Constitutional Monarchy Movement: Led by Sharif Ali Bin Hussein, the first cousin of the late King Faisal, who was killed in a coup in 1958.

The charismatic leader grew up in the West but wants to see a constitutional monarchy restored.