London ? Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that coalition forces should hand over power to an Iraqi government as soon as possible once President Saddam Hussein’s regime is overthrown.

“Iraq at the end should not be run by the Americans, should not be run by the British, should not be run by any outside force or power. It should be run — for the first time in decades — by the Iraqi people,” Blair told the House of Commons.

“In the immediate aftermath of the conflict of course the coalition forces will be there,” he added, after Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy asked whether an interim government would be led by the United States or the United Nations.

“The U.N. has made it quite clear itself that it doesn’t want to lead an Iraqi government, what it wants is the ability to work with us in partnership to make sure that we assemble the broadest possible representation from within Iraq itself.”

Britain has urged a strong role for the United Nations in rebuilding Iraq, but the United States, which has carried the brunt of the invasion to topple Saddam, appears to be less enthusiastic about U.N. participation in an interim administration.

The United States has set up a team to administer Iraq immediately after a war, and appointed retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner to act as a civil administrator. Pentagon officials have said their intention would be to hand over authority to an interim government of Iraqis within months.

“I think the most intelligent way of proceeding is to recognize that the basic principle is that any transitional arrangements and the Iraqi interim authority has got to be U.N.-endorsed,” Blair said. “The rest of it, frankly, is a matter of working in partnership with the U.N. which, if we behave sensibly, we should be able to do very easily.”