Washington  - US president-elect Barack Obama has assembled a cabinet of experienced political leaders and former rivals who will take the reins under some of the most difficult circumstances any incoming US presidential administration has ever faced.

Obama, who enters the White House on January 20, will inherit an economy in a year-long recession with long-running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The transition process has gone relatively smoothly so far, with strong cooperation between Obama's team and that of outgoing President George W Bush.

Obama announced the last members of his cabinet on Friday, unveiling his top appointments faster than any other modern president, according to the White House Transition Project, which has monitored all presidential transitions since Jimmy Carter's in 1976.

Obama pledged during the yearlong presidential campaign to bring change to Washington, but his picks are heavy on experience and include a number of familiar faces from fellow Democratic president Bill Clinton, who was the Republican Bush's predecessor in the White House from 1993-2001.

Counting vice-president elect Joe Biden, Obama's team includes four other 2008 Democratic presidential hopefuls. US media pundits have dubbed it the "team of rivals," harking back to president Abraham Lincoln's cabinet during the US Civil War (1861-65).

Many of Obama's choices have reputations for pragmatism over ideology, and he has named two Republicans and a number of other prominent political figures.

Earlier this month, Obama assembled his national security team, which will be tasked with mapping out a new direction for US foreign policy while coping with conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, and a navigating tensions with a resurgent Russia.

None of his picks garnered more attention than the high-profile appointment of former Democratic nomination rival Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Obama He was praised for keeping the steady hand of Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who has run the Pentagon under Bush for the last two years.

As a former first lady and presidential candidate, Clinton brings a familiar face to the rest of the world along with foreign policy credentials burnished during her eight years in the Senate. Her State Department predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, has said that Clinton will be "great" in the job.

Clinton takes a more hardline approach to foreign policy than Obama, whom she criticized during the Democratic primaries for his stated willingness to meet with the leaders of Iran and Cuba without preconditions.

Before bringing Clinton into his cabinet, the Obama team thoroughly vetted the senator, and her husband Bill Clinton agreed to curtail his international fundraising to avoid creating conflicts of interest.

With Gates, Obama is ensuring a seemless transition at the Pentagon while the nation fights two wars. Gates has been praised for his deft management of the Pentagon after years of highly publicized infighting under Bush's first defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who was forced to quit in late 2006.

Keeping Gates in charge of the military gives credibility to Obama's claimed desire for rigorous debate within the cabinet. While in the Senate, Clinton frequently clashed with Gates over the war in Iraq; Gates and Obama have not seen eye-to-eye on Iraq, either.

Gates oversaw Bush's troop surge in Iraq, which Obama opposed. Gates resisted calls for premature troop withdrawals from Iraq while Obama campaigned on imposing a timeframe.

Days after reluctantly agreeing to stay, Gates said that he was now comfortable with Obama's position, due to the improved security environment in Iraq and the recent agreement reached between Washington and Baghdad for the withdrawal of all US soldiers by 2011.

Obama has sought a degree of continuity with his economic team as he prepares to take charge of a deepening recession and complex financial crisis that has so far been managed by only a few key Bush and central bank officials.

Tim Geithner, Obama's choice for Treasury secretary, has worked very closely with the Bush administration to craft a response to the credit crisis, which nearly brought down the US financial industry. Leading the Federal Reserve Bank's New York branch since 2003, Geithner, 47, has been the US central bank's chief contact with Wall Street financial firms scrambling to avoid collapse.

Current treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that Geithner's "judgement and creativity have been critical to designing and implementing the necessary actions we've taken to protect and strengthen our financial system."

Geithner will be surrounded by a number of other top names from the fields of finance and economics. Larry Summers, set to become Obama's top economic advisor in the White House, was treasury secretary under Clinton.

Obama has created a new advisory board to be headed by Paul Volcker, an 81-year-old former chief of the Federal Reserve, to help lead the US out of its immediate economic crisis.

With Wall Street leaders roundly criticized for making the risky investments that sparked the current economic crisis, Obama's economic team is relatively short on business leaders and big on long-time public servants.

Their policy positions are not as at odds with each other as his foreign policy group.

But Volckers' stature and Summers' reputation for being opinionated will also play into Obama's hopes for spirited debates in his administration. (dpa)