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A Shia nuclear scientist said to be close to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is emerging as one of the frontrunners to become the new prime minister of Iraq. Hussain Shahristani spent a decade in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison for defying former dictator Saddam Hussein's command to turn his scientific expertise to the development of nuclear weapons. Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations special envoy, and Robert Blackwill, a Bush administration official, are still finalising the composition of the new Iraqi government. Officials say that balancing the communal, religious and ethnic groups within the new government is proving difficult and fluid, and caution that...

UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said today that Iraqi nuclear scientist Hussain al-Shahristani doesn't want a top job in new interim government. Al-Shahristani, a Shi'ite Muslim who was jailed under Saddam Hussein's regime, was identified as a leading contender for prime minister. Brahimi, who is in Baghdad helping Iraqis agree on an interim government that will take over June 30, said he met al-Shahristani and thinks highly of him, his spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said in a statement. Brahimi "has no doubt that Mr Shahristani could serve his country well in a number of positions in government", the statement said. "Mr Shahristani,...

May 26, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — The likely head of the new Iraqi government that takes power June 30 is a Shiite nuclear scientist jailed for years in Abu Ghraib prison for refusing to help Saddam Hussein make nuclear weapons, it was reported yesterday. The expected appointee is Hussain Shahristani, 62, a political novice close to the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most powerful cleric, The Washington Post said. "If they consider my participation essential, I'll try to convince them otherwise. But if they're not convinced . . . I cannot refuse," Shahristani told the paper. Post Wire Services

IRAQI President Saddam Hussein has considered surrounding Baghdad with a "belt" of chemical weapons that could be activated during a war, a dissident Iraqi exile said on CNN television today. "There was a report from the resistance groups inside Iraq that Saddam has considered setting up a chemical belt around Baghdad, entrapping about 4 million residents in the city and using them as a human shield," Hussein Al-Shahristani told the network. "That is what I heard from some political activists inside the country recently." CNN described Shahristani as a former nuclear researcher who left Iraq after spending 12 years...

<p>February 19, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein plans to use chemical weapons to create a ring of death around Baghdad to slow down a U.S. invasion and turn the city's residents into hostages, a former Iraqi scientist said yesterday.</p>