TEHRAN: The Bush administration is accelerating development of plans to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But the leader of one of the few credible armed Iraqi opposition groups says he doesn’t want Washington’s help.

“There is no need to send troops from outside to Iraq,” says the black-turband Ayatollah Mohammad Bakr al-Hakkim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). “It could be seen as an invasion and could create new problems.”

Though courted for months by American diplomats to join in their effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah al-Hakkim — also commander of the 10,000-strong Badr Brigade militia — urges caution in a rare interview. The chief reason is President Bush’s declaration that SCIRI’S host and sponsor, Iran, is part of an “axis of evil,” as well as the past experience of the Iraqi opposition with “unreliable” US support.

The “Afghan model” of backing proxy forces, as the US did against the Taliban, does not apply to Iraq, al-Hakkim says. One Pentagon option includes a pincer operation toward Baghdad, with 50,000 American troops moving from the south with SCIRI’s Shia guerrillas and 50,000 more moving from the north with Kurdish fighters.

Such plans are “very far-fetched” and a “bad idea,” al-Hakkim says, his cleric’s face framed by a gray beard.

Few doubt growing American resolve against Iraq, though no evidence has emerged that Baghdad was involved in the Sept 11 attacks, or in any terrorist act for the past decade.

But Iraq is clearly a target. US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday there are no “plans” to attack North Korea or Iran, but that Iraq was a special case.

Powell said a “regime change” in Iraq, however, “would be in the best interests of the region.” He says Bush is considering “the most serious set of options one might imagine.”

Vice President Dick Cheney is to make a nine-nation Mideast tour in March to solidify allied support for any moves against Iraq.

Few armed opponents of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein have suffered as much as Iraq’s southern Shias. They have seen their religious leaders assassinated, their marshes — both their economic lifeline and hiding place — drained, and their 1991 uprising put down mercilessly with a toxic cocktail of chemical weapons.

So few might be so willing — after spilling blood for years to topple the Iraqi leader — to embrace Washington’s growing plans to do just that.

Contacts between SCIRI and US officials outside Iran had warmed during the Afghan campaign, like those between the US and Iran. American diplomats had been increasing contacts for months.

The SCIRI is now warning that US troops in Iraq would be a “mistake.”

Afghanistan is also a sore point: “Iran had a bad experience at the end of the Afghan war,” says Dodge. “They helped, but at the end, the US tried to foist a US-client state on Iran. They are not going to let that happen in Iraq.”

On the surface, the aims of SCIRI, Iran, and the US appear to coincide in Iraq. Few dislike Baghdad’s rulers more than the Iranians. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was started by Saddam Hussein in the early days of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

Still, Iran and SCIRI — which is overseen by Iranian security forces — are trying to gauge the impact of America’s saber- rattling against Iraq, and weigh up their own interests. The bottom line: what is the endgame?

Ayatollah al-Hakkim insists that SCIRI wants to create a democratic regime in Iraq that includes all its ethnic and religious groups. More than 60 per cent of Iraqis share the Shia branch of Islam, along with Iran.

President George Bush Sr. promised Iraqis that the US would support their uprising, but then appeared to change his mind when it was clear that chaos — and possibly a Shia-run state allied to Iran — could result.

Ayatollah al-Hakkim, with a flourish of his hands, says his forces “will use any new chance that comes to hand” to move against Baghdad, though “nobody can speak of the secrets of the (US) administration.”

He has his own hunch, too, which he delivers with the broadest of smiles: “They say they made mistakes in 1991,” al-Hakkim says, laughing out loud. “George W. Bush is trying to correct the mistakes of his father.”—Dawn/The Christian Science Monitor News Service.