Baghdad: US Government hired a think-tank to design a crash course in democracy for the Iraqis before the handover of power by the US led coalition to Iraqis by June 30.

A North Carolina based private research body, Research Triangle Institute (RTI) has come up with "Democracy dialogue" will run from April to mid-June, an initiator said.

"It can happen in a mosque, in a town hall or in somebody's home. The programme is intended to be more or less informal sessions of people coming together in their communities to discuss topics related to democracy," a civil society expert said.

RTI's 18 offices in Iraq are in the process of hiring a total of 550 local "facilitators" who will conduct the events throughout the country over a period of around 10 weeks, he said on condition of anonymity.

"We are hoping that no less than 500,000 people will be reached by this programme," said the RTI contractor, tasked with training the regional and local programme managers.

Some of the 15 topics to be discussed in the workshops are, "What is a Constitution?", "Women's issues", "What is a judiciary?" or "Can Islam co-exist with democracy?".