LONDON - With only a few days to go before this weekend's conference of Iraqi dissidents here, the meeting's organizers realized they had some unfinished business before they could consider weightier matters, such as who could lead Iraq if President Saddam Hussein is removed from power.

For example, no one had reserved a hotel conference room for the meeting, so there was no place to meet. And while dealing with that problem, the organizers acknowledged that they had no written agenda, no agreed-upon topics of conversation, no crafted statements to issue, however innocuous. They had, in fact, not even settled on who would call the meeting to order.

This is a group that the Bush administration is ostensibly counting on to help shepherd Iraq's 25 million people from living under a decades-old dictatorship to a new, yet-to-be-designed government that would have to prevent religious and ethnic factions from tearing the country apart.

The organizers have since managed to rent a conference room in central London for about 300 of the Iraqi opposition members who will meet this weekend as part of their quest to play a role in any new government. But there still is no formal agenda, and any public discussions about a post-Hussein Iraq will deal only with generalities because the organizers and the U.S. government do not want public disagreements among the opposition groups.

Organized by the Iraqi National Congress at the behest of the U.S. State Department, the gathering is designed to show that the religious and ethnic factions of Iraq's opposition parties are united. And they are, in fact, unanimous in their desire to see Hussein toppled.

But the organizational problems are emblematic of deep divisions within the opposition groups. No conference hall had been reserved because of arguments over whose supporters should be invited. There is no formal agenda because those who will attend have sharply divergent views about what Iraq should look like the day after any invasion - and some still disagree on the wisdom of the United States leading the charge to remove Hussein; they'd prefer that an invasion be led by another country with support from dissidents in Iraq.

The unity conference, in fact, has been postponed several times - for lack of unity.

"The conference is for public relations, nothing else," said Jihad Khazen, a columnist and editor for the respected Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, which publishes throughout the Middle East and in London. "There will be a lot of talk about Saddam, because he's easy to agree on. There won't be much talk, if any, about anything else."

So, a group of mostly aged exiles who agree on almost nothing other than their desire to see Hussein fall will gather in a great show and agree on almost nothing other than their desire to see Hussein fall.

The disagreements, Khazen said, have no real bearing on decisions President Bush might make about how to handle a transition from Hussein's dictatorship to a new government, because most of the leaders of the groups have been out of Iraq for years - decades, in some cases - and have no real following in the country.

A 'viable alternative'

"The Iraqi National Congress is a case in point," he said. "They're well-meaning, but they're all older and they have no influence on the ground. Their function is to provide the U.S. government with the cover it needs to say that there is an obvious, viable alternative" to Hussein.

American officials have been trying to identify military officers and senior civil servants inside Iraq who would support an interim administrative body and perhaps serve in key posts. Officials are focusing inside Iraq because they fear that Iraqis will not tolerate an imported government, even a temporary one.

American planners might also decide to depend on tribal leaders to help lead a transition to a new government.

That term "tribal leaders" conjures up images of sheepherders living on the edge of Iraq's western desert or the remains of its southern marshes, but in fact they are largely urbanized and sophisticated politically, their power growing over the past decade mostly due to Iraq's s deteriorating economy. With United Nations sanctions taking their toll, government handouts have diminished, and people with needs have turned to tribal leaders for help. The tribal leaders, in turn, appeal to Hussein, and he rations the wealth in exchange for domestic peace.

Still, even some opposition leaders agree privately that the show in London goes on without much point. They are scheduled to convene Saturday and discuss Iraq's future, based on a 98-page report that was written under the direction of the State Department and carefully avoids any topics likely to split the groups. They will meet again on Sunday, though there is no agenda, and on Monday they will conduct a news conference to present again, the Bush administration hopes, a united front.

The Iraqi National Congress, or INC, is supposed to be an umbrella group under which the major opposition groups can stand united. It includes more than 50 political parties, but only six are recognized by the U.S. government.

They include the Iraqi National Accord (made up of former army officers and defectors from Hussein's Baath Party), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (rival groups based in autonomous northern Iraq), the Constitutional Monarchy Movement (which is aiming for a return of a Hashemite king as a unifying force) and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (an Iran-based fundamentalist group of Shiite Muslims).

Then there is the INC. In addition to its organizing duties, and despite its status as an umbrella organization, it has become a major opposition group itself, led by Ahmad Chalabi, a U.S-educated exile who has fallen out of favor with the State Department but is still championed by the Pentagon.

He has been accused of fraud in the United States and Jordan - charges he has said are politically motivated - but his INC has the highest profile of the opposition groups, in no small measure because the U.S. government has given it about $15 million a year in an effort to unify the opposition under one name. The other groups receive lesser amounts.

"If they want to keep that money and get more, they do what the U.S. government says - they get together and smile," said Remy Leveau, a Middle East expert at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris. "It's American pressure they answer to in hopes of getting money and some job to do after the toppling of Saddam.

"The problem the United States has, if they don't pressure these groups, the opposition collapses and people say going to war is impossible. If they apply too much pressure, there are nationalists to worry about who don't want a new MacArthur in Iraq dictating everything."

The fault lines

For now, Leveau said, the groups can appear to work together because they all want Hussein to fall. Once he is gone, though, they will "react according to their fault lines," he added, and band together along sectarian, ethnic or clan allegiances. Some can be expected to align themselves with countries and organizations that have long supported them or whom they empathize with, including Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Thus, the State Department's concentration on support inside Iraq while insisting on conferences like the one that begins Saturday.

Sharif Ali bin Hussein, who hopes to reclaim the Iraqi throne once held by his cousin, King Faisal II, who was overthrown and killed in 1958, said the disagreements are a natural part of a movement that has aspirations such as removing a long-entrenched dictator. While his group, the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, has been in existence for more than a decade, only recently has the prospect of Hussein's downfall become real, he said.

He has not been in Iraq since 1958 - when he was 2 - when Faisal was killed in a military coup. He wants to be king, he said, as a unifying force that would provide stability for a democracy. But he acknowledges that the opposition groups have a lot of work to do before any decisions are made - and that the United States may not care what they ultimately decide, if they decide anything.

"The Iraqi opposition should not be mistaken for a liberation force," he said. "The other organizations do want to govern, that's true, but that hasn't been the focus until recently."

Little popular support

Daniel Neep, an expert on Iraq at the Royal United Services, a think tank in London, said it is doubtful that the opposition leaders will play a significant role in a post-Hussein Iraq.

"You can't depose Saddam and rebuild the government from scratch. You have to use what is already there," he said. "I'd say it's highly unlikely that when returning to Iraq, the opposition leaders are going to gain a popular support base from within the country, especially compared to people who already have power bases."

Still, Neep said, the weekend conference could be useful for its behind-the-scenes benefits. Some of the leaders could, for example, discuss the largest disagreement among them, the future of Kurdish northern Iraq. Some leaders fear a complete breakaway. Others have been pushing for an autonomous role for the Kurds within the framework of an Iraq republic.

"Certainly, what they're going to say in public is going to be the lowest common denominator - what they can all gather behind," he said. "What they say in private may be far different, and maybe a forum like this works to bring the leaders together."

This week, Chalabi of the INC and two other Iraqi opposition leaders were meeting in Tehran, apparently in an effort to overcome disagreements that could, again, cancel the conference.