BAGHDAD: Iraq’s long-suppressed Shias want to shape their own future after Saddam Hussein’s downfall, not set up an Iranian-style Islamic republic, Iraqi Shia leaders and analysts say.

“We are Iraqis, not Iranians,” said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, an aide to Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

“If the Shias take their fair share in governing Iraq, there will be stability in this country,” he said.

“But if our isolation continues under different pretexts, such as being influenced by Iran, then chaos will prevail.”

The United States and Britain have recently turned up the heat on Iran, accusing it of interfering in Iraq.

Tehran has dismissed the charges, which fatten an already thick dossier of US complaints against Iran. Washington also accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, backing international terrorism and undermining Middle East peace efforts.

Iran’s grievances against Washington include what it sees as a long history of US interference in its affairs, US support for Israel and for Iraq in its 1980-88 war with Iran.

It also complains that its “reward” for cooperating with US policy in Afghanistan was membership in President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he would not let Iraq’s neighbours create an Iranian-style theocracy in the country.

SHIA DIVERSITY: But Rumsfeld’s presumption that Iran wants to replicate its troubled ruling system in Iraq and that Iraqi Shias would happily follow Tehran’s lead are open to challenge.