Iraqi exiles negotiate over the shape of a post-Saddam Iraq

By Salah Nasrawi ~ The Associated Press

LONDON -- Fractious Iraqi exile groups, united in little but their wish to get rid of Saddam Hussein, struggled to agree on a plan Saturday for a democratic government in Iraq if the president is ousted.

Split along ethnic and religious lines, the opposition groups were deadlocked when their representatives discussed the shape of a possible post-Saddam administration on the first day of a two-day conference in a London hotel.

Their rivalries have grown sharper as the prospect of U.S. military action to overthrow Saddam has increased in recent months.

In opening remarks, the leaders of the six groups that organized the "For Democracy and Salvation of Iraq" meeting called for unity and promised to build "a new democratic and pluralistic Iraq at peace with its neighbors."

"These are not dreams, but noble objectives which people who have suffered from dictators have been able to achieve before us," said Sharif Ali bin Al-Hussein, leader of the Constitutional Monarchist Movement.

Outside the conference venue, dozens of Iraqi, Arab and Muslim activists staged a demonstration, claiming the conference was part of a campaign for a U.S-led invasion of Iraq.

"Bush and Blair will murder millions of Iraqi for oil," read one placard.

Delegates scoffed at the protest.

"We have full right to ask for foreign help, and we should not be ashamed," said Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two groups that controls the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq.

The approximately 300 delegates -- who included turbaned Islamic clerics, tribal chieftains and women in black head-to-toe robes -- represented all Iraqi ethnic and religious groups and came from as far as Iran, Syria and the United States.

"This movement is encompassing all Iraqi forces who will rebuild a new, free and energetic Iraq," said Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of some Iraqi exile groups.

Diplomats from the United States, Britain, Turkey, Kuwait and Iran attended the opening session. Foremost was Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's envoy to the Iraqi opposition. Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan, said he and other U.S. officials would attend the conference's closed sessions.

The top item on the agenda is the selection of an interim administration to run Iraq in the event of Saddam being overthrown.

Rivalries over such a government quickly became apparent when a group of exiles not affiliated to the six factions hosting the conference gave journalists a document containing their ideas.

Kurdish representatives and delegates of Iraq's Muslim Shiite majority objected that they had not seen the 100-page report, drawn up by 32 exiles under the auspices of the U.S. State Department.

The document proposes an interim government that would include representatives of the Kurdish minority from northern Iraq and Iraqi Arab exiles. The plan stops short of proposing a demilitarized Iraq, but it suggests abolishing Saddam's elite forces, including the feared Republican Guard, and reducing the size of the 400,000-strong Iraqi army.

Hoshyar Zibari, a Kurdish leader, accused the exiles of "trying to hijack the conference" by releasing the report to the press before the delegates.

Another divisive issue is the future of Iraqi Kurds, who now live in a U.S.-protected autonomous zone.

Kurdish leaders want the conference to adopt a federal political system that will give their population -- nearly 4 million -- greater autonomy in a post-Saddam Iraq.

"A federal system is the only solution for strengthening our national unity," said Massoud Barazani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two groups that controls the autonomous zone.

Not too many non-Kurdish Iraqis want that.

"We should not take hasty decisions before we liberate our people, who should have the last say," said Gen. Hassan al-Naqib, a former army commander who represents Arabs of the Muslim Sunni sect at the conference.