KUWAIT CITY, March 20: Iraq's US-installed interim leadership is an "imposed" body no more representative of the Iraqi people than former president Saddam Hussein, one of its members said in remarks published on Saturday.

"Absolutely", said interim electricity minister Ayham al Samarrai when asked by Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai Al Aam whether the Interim Governing Council represented "a dictatorship group".

"The members of the Governing Council and the cabinet think they represent 70 per cent of the Iraqi people. How can they be sure? We have been imposed on the Iraqi people by America," said Samarrai, one of five Sunni ministers in Iraq's first post-Saddam government.

"Of course, most of the members are known in Iraqi society ... by their opposition to the former regime and also by their democratic thinking," he said, speaking on the sidelines of an economic symposium on Iraq in Beirut.

"However, we don't represent the people. No one chose us. Saddam was not chosen by anyone and neither were we."

Mr Samarrai added that there was "divergence and discord" within the Governing Council and that its members "don't apply the vote".

"I think they have applied the vote once or twice when they have made more than a hundred decisions," he said.

"Most of the essential decisions made by the council were cancelled by the (US) civil administrator (Paul Bremer) for lack of harmony among the members." -AFP