LONDON - Opponents of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein opened a conference here yesterday in hopes of forming a united front and planning for a transitional government that would prevent the United States from imposing its vision on a post-Hussein Iraq.
Although there is plenty of dissension among the conference's 330 delegates about how and when such a transitional government should be formed, a string of speakers from across the opposition's political spectrum expressed unanimity in their demand that the United States leave Iraq's political future to Iraqis.
In particular, the opposition rejects two prospects floated by the Bush administration: a transitional military government, or an transitional Iraqi team chosen by the Americans that would operate under the supervision of a U.S. military officer.
"We must not leave the door open for the imposition of external military rule or foreign control of Iraq's oil or the loss of Iraq's national sovereignty," said Abdelaziz al-Hakim. Al-Hakim's brother, Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, is an Iran-based ayatollah who leads the main Shiite Muslim opposition group, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
But deep divisions remain within the opposition over when an Iraqi-nominated transitional team should be appointed.
One camp, led by an Iraqi businessman, Ahmed Chalabi, is pushing for a transitional team to be created before any U.S.-led invasion against Hussein's government.
The team, according to Chalabi's proposal, would move to Iraq if Hussein was ousted and would form a transitional government to rule the country until a constitutional assembly and subsequent parliamentary elections could be held.
A competing bloc prefers to leave the selection of a transitional team until after Hussein is pushed from power. That group consists of Kurds who govern northern Iraq, former officials of Iraq's governing Baath Party with ties to dissidents in the Iraqi government, and Shiite Muslims who have armed forces in the country and in neighboring Iran.
Chalabi's backers worry that if a transitional team is not formed before an attack, other groups with an armed presence in Iraq would rush to fill the power vacuum, leaving Chalabi and others outside the country in a weaker position.
They also argue that by forming a transitional team before any military move, they would force the United States to give them a leading role in the governance of a post-Hussein Iraq.
"It would blunt a U.S. move to impose a transitional government of their own," one of Chalabi's supporters said after the conference's morning session.