Bremer told a press conference the bodies were being formed to give the new Iraq the appropriate structures "to defend the country against terrorists and insurgents."

But he vowed they would remain under tight civilian control.

"Given Iraq's recent history it is important to ensure that Iraq's national security organisations are open to scrutiny and under political control," he said.

Iraq's interim trade minister Ali Allawi will head the new defence ministry while Mohammad Abdullah Mohammad al-Shehwani, a former officer forced into exile by the Saddam Hussein regime, becomes the new director general of the national intelligence service.

"Iraq will not be a threat to its neighbours," Allawi said at the same news conference.

Before becoming trade minister Allawi, born in 1947, was a senior assistant at the Center of Middle Eastern Studies of St. Anthony's College, at Oxford University in Britain.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States in 1968 and an MBA from Harvard in 1971.

A staunch opponent of Saddam's former ruling Baath party since the late 1960s, Allawi also managed several investment organisations before joining Iraq's new leadership.

Shehwani, who said he was persecuted by Saddam's regime for 18 years, was also born in 1947, in the northern city of Mosul.

He was a major-general in Saddam's disbanded army but was forced to retire in 1984 by the Revolutionary Command Council.

He lived under surveillance until 1990 when he managed to flee Iraq to Britain, where he led an underground movement opposed to the regime until 1996.

But Saddam discovered the organisation and his henchmen assassinated several of its members, including three of Shehwani's sons.

Shehwani fought among coalition ranks to oust Saddam's regime in the US-led war.

The US-led coalition dismantled the Iraqi army and the powerful intelligence services last May, a month after toppling Saddam's regime.

A new Iraqi army and police force are both being built and trained by the coalition in Iraq and in Jordan.

Saddam led a conscript army created that fielded some 400,000 troops. Quality was poor and motivation low.

By contrast, the new, mainly US-funded army is expected to be a 35,000-strong force, including some 1,400 officers, and be in place by the end of September.

It will be controlled by civilians at the new defense ministry, which is to reopen April 15, after being shut down last year under the US-led occupation.

However, the new Iraqi army will report to the coalition command until sovereignty is handed over to a caretaker Iraqi government on June 30.

The new defence minister will also be in charge of the air force, an Iraqi coastal defence force, the paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defence Force, as well as an Iraqi counter-terrorism unit.

A ministerial committee on national security will also emerge alongside the ministry to coordinate policies between the ministry and other security agencies, a coalition official said last week.

The committee will comprise the prime minister as well as the ministers of defence, interior, foreign affairs, justice and finance, security and military advisers, as well as the director general of Iraqi intelligence, he added.

The US-picked interim Governing Council announced last week the creation of the new intelligence agency and insisted its job would be to hunt insurgents and would not resemble its brutal forerunner.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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