View emerging of Shiite-ruled Iraq

Nevertheless, Mr. Bayati says there are three leading figures to be Iraq's next prime minister, and all are from the UIA: Jaafari, Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mehdi, and Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shiite and former Pentagon favorite. "Mr. Chalabi isn't necessarily as strong a candidate as the other two, but he's put his name forward,'' says Bayati.

Another name that is frequently mentioned for Iraq's top post is Hussein al-Shahrastani, a nuclear scientist who is close to Iraq's most popular religious figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Mr. Sistani does not want clerics to be involved directly in running the government, but hopes that loyal Shiite lay people will take directives from religious leaders when writing Iraq's new laws.

"The Koran should be the main basis for writing the constitution,'' says Ali al-Waedh, Sistani's representative in the Baghdad district of Khadimiya. "We should not be politicians, but if there are some things in the constitution that conflict with Islam, then the marjaiyah [leading Shiite scholars] will reject it."

Sistani and Iraq's mainstream clerics do not want an Iranian-style theocracy, but there's a wide gulf between rejecting the Iranian system and wanting a secular state. "We will not follow the Iranian experience - we will have freedom here,'' says Mr. Waedh. "But when we consider things like family law, Muslims must follow the sharia. For non-Muslims, they will be free to choose other methods."

Iraq's route from occupation to full sovereignty is largely guided by the Transitional Administrative Law, an interim constitution that was written by the US and its appointed Governing Council last year.

Mr. Jaafari, a medical doctor who lived in exile in London until the regime fell, says he wants a key provision of that law tossed out. It says that if two-thirds of the population in three Iraqi provinces reject Iraq's new constitution, it will be scrapped. The provision was added to assuage the fear of the ethnic Kurds, who largely inhabit three northern provinces. The so-called "Kurdish veto" could also help Iraq's Sunni Arabs, concentrated in three central provinces.

Bayati, who participated in writing the transitional document, says he doesn't think the Kurdish veto will be scrapped. But other things will change, he says. One sticking point was changes to the law that gave women equal inheritance rights to men. But the Koran is specific that men should inherit more than women, and "this will have be altered."

However, Bayati says he doesn't expect the emerging government will be dogmatic. For instance alcohol, which is forbidden in Islam, will probably remain legal. It's that degree of flexibility that holds hope that while Iraq's Shiites will be the dominant force in the emerging order, they won't impose rules on Iraq's divided population that could lead to more conflict.

"We're a majority but we have to be careful that we don't create other problems, like political isolation or breed more terrorism,'' Jaafari says.

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