When US President Franklin Roosevelt asked Josef Stalin to consider seeking the advice of Pope Pius XII about the shape of post-World War II Europe, the Soviet dictator famously replied, ''How many divisions does the Pope have?''

The same question can now be asked about the State Department, or even the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the British government.

They have all argued for months that any post-war Iraq leadership should emerge o­nly as a result of consultation, optimally under United Nations auspices, among mainly internal forces, as well as exile groups. The US Defence Department has its own ideas about this.

Surprise move

The Pentagon has long favoured the installation as soon as possible of an Interim Iraqi Authority (IIA) led by the exiled Iraqi National Congress (INC) of Ahmed Chalabi, to give an Iraqi face to the occupation authorities.

The White House has been coy. But o­n Sunday, President George W. Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice ( photo ) appeared to side with the State Department, declaring that both internal figures and exile parties should play a role in any IIA.

So it came as some surprise when, as Rice was speaking, the Pentagon flew some 500 INC activists - plus Chalabi himself - from the northern Iraqi safe haven where they had been cooling their heels into the southern US-occupied city of Nasiriyah, where Chalabi quickly met with local dignitaries, apparently to gain their backing.

That this took place o­n the eve of Bush's Belfast meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair was regarded as particularly significant, since Blair had lined up solidly behind the State Department.

''Bush agreed that we would not dream of parachuting people from outside Iraq to run Iraq,'' o­ne ''senior Blair aide'' told Newsweek two days before.

Core group

While senior Pentagon officials insisted the move was not intended to give a leg up to Chalabi ( photo ) in the competition to succeed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Gen. Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the contingent as ''basically the core of the new Iraqi army o­nce Iraq is free''.

An INC press release touted the force more precisely as the 'First Battalion, Free Iraqi Forces (FIF)', although most of the activists were, according to the Washington Post , ''so lightly armed they lacked even pistols, let alone assault rifles''.

Their arrival, however, marked the successful culmination of a two-week-old campaign by neo-conservatives in and outside the administration to get the INC and Chalabi into Iraq before any other group, presumably to pre-empt any moves by the State Department or other opposition groups to claim the media spotlight.

It also marked the fact that, with 250,000 men o­n the ground, the Pentagon will be calling the shots in Iraq, even in defiance of other bureaucracies that, in contrast to the Defence Department, have real experts o­n Iraqi politics, history, and culture who could prove helpful in carrying out an occupation.

''You can call this another aspect of (Deputy Defence Secretary Paul) Wolfowitz's pre-emption strategy,'' said o­ne administration official. ''You can call this a coup d'etat .''

Critics' view

Chalabi has long been a favourite of the neo-conservatives, particularly Wolfowitz and the powerful former chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, who have led the drive to war with Iraq since the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks o­n New York and the Pentagon.

An extremely controversial figure, Chalabi, a London-based banker, first came to prominence in the eest shortly after the first Gulf War when he co-founded the INC, the first effort at building an umbrella for various opposition groups to rally against Saddam Hussein.

His opponents, particularly in the State Department and the CIA, which worked closely with him in the early 1990s to help instigate a coup against Saddam, consider him unreliable.

They note that the INC itself has suffered many defections of promising Iraqis over the past decade due in major part to their complaints about Chalabi's imperious style and authoritarianism.

The former head of the US Central Command, ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who also has advised Secretary of State Colin Powell o­n the Middle East, has been particularly outspoken, referring to Chalabi and his INC colleagues as ''silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London''.

Chalabi's critics also point to his 1989 conviction for bank fraud in Jordan, from which he hurriedly fled after being tipped off about his indictment.

He and the INC further failed to predict the extent and ferocity of resistance to the US invasion of Iraq despite their long-standing claims of having thousands of sympathisers in key posts in Iraq ready to rise up o­nce US troops appeared o­n the horizon.

Indeed, Chalabi and his major supporters in Washington DC were those who most confidently predicted that US soldiers would be greeted with ''flowers and sweets'' by the Iraqi population as they made their way from Kuwait to Baghdad.

Strong network

Nonetheless, his backers here have stuck ferociously behind him. They accuse the State Department and his other foes of representing the interests of the Sunni-dominated governments in the region, especially Saudi Arabia.

Analysts at Perle's neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute claim that Saudi Arabia fears that an Iraqi government headed by Chalabi, a Shi'ite like the majority of Iraqis, may provoke instability among its own Shi'a population.

They also insist that Chalabi is devoted to human rights, democratisation, and a federal structure for a future Iraq that would provide greater autonomy for the country's disparate regions and groups, a model which also explains, they say, why he is opposed by many of Iraq's neighbours.

On foreign policy, the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon see in Chalabi a reliably ally, particularly in dealing with Syria and Iran, which has also pledged to recognise Israel, thus moving the balance of power in the region solidly toward those wishing to make peace with Israel.

While Chalabi's networks inside Iraq may be less than what he has claimed - a recent CIA study reportedly found that "overwhelming numbers" of Iraqis were suspicious of Chalabi and the INC - his network of support in Washington and especially the Pentagon goes very deep indeed.

Money talk

Half a dozen Republican senators called this week for the administration to immediately provide millions of dollars to the INC.

On Monday the Wall Street Journal , a long-time Chalabi champion, called o­n Bush to reject the State Department's and Blair's advice. The editorial page also doubled the INC force sent to southern Iraq from 500 to 1,000.

In addition, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a 'citizens' group' chaired by former Secretary of State George Shultz whose membership consists of a 'who's who' of neo-conservatives outside the administration, has turned over its website to the INC.

Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ( photo ) o­n Monday suggested that he might even defy Congress, which is leaning toward earmarking US$2.5 billion in relief and reconstruction aid for Iraq to the State Department instead of the Pentagon.

''In the last analysis,'' he told reporters, ''it's the president's policy, and whatever is put forward by the Congress by way of money will be expended in a way that the president decides should be expended.''