"After a series of meetings over the past four days, the notables set up a 30-member committee that will administer the region in the transitional stage, which we hope won't last long," Nizar Haidar told AFP by phone from Karbala.

The committee held its first meeting on Tuesday night and elected Mohammad Hussein Mohammad Ali Nasrallah as governor of Karbala province, said Haidar, a Karbala-born member of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC), the umbrella organization headed by Ahmad Chalabi that opposed Saddam's regime.

Haidar returned to Karbala, which had been a symbol of resistance against the regime since a crushed 1991 uprising, around 10 days ago after several years in the United States. He said he spent five years in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq from 1991 to 1996.

Nasrallah replaces Lieutenant General Talei al-Duri, who like other members of Saddam's Baath Party, dropped out of sight after US forces took over Karbala on April 6.

Haidar said the committee, which is open to expansion, groups tribal leaders such as Sheikh Saad Sufuk al-Saoud, who heads the al-Saoud tribes, and top clerics such as Ayatollah Mohammad Mujahed al-Tabtabai, who spent 22 years behind bars on charges of inciting people against Saddam's mainly Sunni regime.

The new body also includes Sayyed Saheb Abbud al-Shurufi, a Karbala dignitary, and tribal chieftain Sheikh Abd Ali Abdulkhalek al-Hmairi.

US troops seized the strategically important city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad, on April 6 after killing about 400 Iraqi paramilitary soldiers during two days of intense fighting, according to the US military.

Karbala, a holy Shiite city along with Najaf a further 80 kilometers south, is home to around half a million people, while Karbala province as a whole is home to three times that number.

Haidar said US forces were stationed at the entrances to Karbala and had been sending a limited number of patrols into the city at night to head off any security breaches. The area had generally remained orderly after a brief spate of lootings when local authorities collapsed.

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