LONDON: As US officials and Iraqi opposition groups squabble over possible successors to Saddam Hussein, Prince Hassan of neighbouring Jordan is emerging as a surprise contender.

The idea, which has support in the Pentagon and among conservative thinkers in the US, envisages the prince rising above Iraqi factionalism as a compromise figurehead, or even as king.

Some argue that his involvement could also ease tensions in Washington, where the state department and CIA have been at loggerheads with Congress and the Pentagon over Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella opposition group funded by US taxpayers.

“Prince Hassan is someone who has not been poisoned by the past 40 years of chaos in Iraq and is perhaps the only person who can transcend the ethnic and political complexities,” said Michael Rubin of the Washington thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute.

Hassan, 55, was crown prince of Jordan for many years and effectively ruled the country during the terminal illness of his eldest brother, the late King Hussein.

But a few weeks before his death in 1999, King Hussein removed him from the succession and nominated his own son, the present King Abdullah.

On April 8, Prince Hassan had talks at the Pentagon with Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defence. The subject was never disclosed but since then he has begun to assume a higher political profile.

This culminated in his dramatic “coming out” last week when — surrounded by TV cameras — he arrived unexpectedly at a conference of exiled Iraqi officers in London. It was the first time that a high-ranking Arab had publicly associated himself with the Iraqi opposition. His move appears to have been well received.

Speculation has been heightened by the fact that the Jordanian royal family is related to the Iraqi royal family, whose last king, Faisal II, was deposed and assassinated in 1958.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.