BAGHDAD, April 18: Pro-American Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi said on Friday the United States should oversee post-war Iraq and the United Nations lacked the capability and credibility to take a leadership role there.

At a news conference in the Iraqi Hunting Club — his first since arriving in Baghdad on Wednesday — Mr Chalabi also said he did not want a post in an interim Iraqi government and would devote himself to developing civil society.

But the man seen by many analysts as the US choice to lead Iraq left open the question of whether he would stand as a candidate if the country held democratic elections.

“I do not think that the United Nations is either capable or has the credibility in Iraq to play a major role,” he told an audience of mainly Western reporters on his first visit to Baghdad since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.

“And the moral imperative is on the side of the United States, and the Iraqi people will accept a leadership role for the United States in this process,” he said. “The United States does not want to run Iraq.”

Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), was the first major exile politician to reach Baghdad since the collapse of the government of Saddam Hussein.

The US military flew him — along with 700 of the Free Iraqi Forces who back the INC — to the southern city of Nassariya 11 days ago, giving him a head start over other exile politicians.

An INC official, Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi, said on Thursday he had been chosen to head an interim council to run Baghdad. He did not say who elected him or when, and most Iraqis said they knew nothing about the polling.

On Friday, US troops and Free Iraqi Forces guarded the building where Chalabi’s news conference was held near a construction site.—Reuters