A council of up to nine Iraqis will probably lead the country's interim government through the coming months, the American civil administrator said yesterday. The US military meanwhile announced the arrest of a former Iraqi intelligence chief and a top biological weapons scientist.

　　The US Army had no details on Adil Salfeg Al-Azarui, the onetime top spy for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government and an official in the ousted leader's Baath Party. Al-Azarui, not on the US list of 55 most-wanted former Iraqi officials, was once the mayor of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.

　　Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, among the 55 most wanted, was takensintoscustody on Sunday, a Defense Department official said. US intelligence officials said that Ammash, 49, is believed to have played a key role in "rebuilding Baghdad's biological weapons capability" since the Gulf War in 1991.

　　Iraq's US administrator, retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, said he expected a smallsgroupsof leaders to take the reins of post-Saddam Iraq. Such a notion had been discussed last week at a political meeting in Baghdad.

　　"What you may see is as many as seven, eight, nine leaders working together to provide leadership," said Garner, who was making a one-day trip yesterday to Basra, Iraq's second-biggest city.

　　Iraqi faction leaders and US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said they would meet again in coming weeks and hoped to form an interim government early next month.

　　The Iraqi leaders Garner referred to were 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 ShiitesgroupsSupreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

　　Thesgroupshas already met several times and Garner said it would probably be expanded to include a Christian and perhaps another Sunni Muslim leader.

　　Garner also said he expects the newly appointed L. Paul Bremer, former head of the US State Depart-ment's counterterrorism office, to take charge of the political process within the American postwar administration. Bremer is expected to arrive in Iraq by next week.