The US civil administrator of Iraq, Jay Garner, said this morning a collective interim leadership should be set up in Iraq by the middle of May.
"By the middle of the month, you'll really see a beginning of a nucleus of an Iraqi government with an Iraqi face on it that is dealing with the coalition," said the retired US general, in charge of post-war reconstruction in Iraq.
Mr Garner said he expected up to nine Iraqis to form an interim leadership group that would be a point of contact for the Americans.
The group would consist of some returned exiles and some local Iraqis, representing Iraq's ethnic and religious spectrum.
Mr Garner named Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party; Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress; Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord; and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, whose elder brother heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
He said that group would likely be expanded to include, for example, a Christian, and perhaps another Sunni figure.
Iraqis are angry at a breakdown in security and public services since the US-led war to topple president Saddam Hussein ended.
Iraqi preachers demanded on Friday that the United States establish a government to restore order after President George W Bush declared the war effectively over.
Mr Garner, speaking to reporters in Baghdad before leaving on a two-day trip to Basra, said Iraq's reconstruction was not as difficult as he had expected -- mainly because the war caused less infrastructure damage and fewer refugees than anticipated.
"We started with a glass more half-full than we expected," Garner said. However, the level of looting was unexpected, he said.
While the US-led war had generally "preserved the wealth of the nation", UN sanctions were slowing Iraq's recovery, Mr Garner said.
Washington has pushed for UN sanctions to be lifted.