---

By ED JOHNSON
Associated Press
April 1, 2003

---

LONDON (AP) --

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called for a U.N.-sponsored international conference to choose Iraq's new leaders, and said Tuesday that reconstruction of the country is likely to take years.

Straw said such a conference should follow the example of the session in Koenigswater, Germany in 2001 where Hamid Karzai was nominated to lead a new government of Afghanistan.

"I very much hope that following the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, the U.N. will have a leading role in organizing a conference to bring together representatives from all sections of Iraq's society," Straw said in a speech to Britain's Newspaper Society.

"The objective of such a conference would be to place the responsibility for decisions about Iraq's political and economic future firmly in the hands of the Iraqi people."

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has been pushing President Bush to seek U.N. involvement in postwar Iraq.

Rebuilding Iraq will be a long haul, Straw said.

"Turning things around in a fully comprehensive way will not be the work of months. It is likely to take years," Straw said. "The psychological scars inflicted by Saddam will take even longer to heal."

Meanwhile, Britain's Ministry of Defense said a soldier was killed Monday in southern Iraq while disposing of explosive ordnance, bringing the British death toll to 26 since the start of the war.