LONDON - After four sleepless nights, six walkouts, numerous arguments and at least one attempted fistfight in a hotel bar, a conference of Iraqi opposition groups agreed yesterday on how many of them should serve on a committee to shape Iraq's future in the event that President Saddam Hussein is removed from power.

American officials and leaders of key opposition groups hailed the conference as a successful display of Iraqi opposition to Hussein, although the five-day meeting served as much to amplify divisions as it did to quell them, and another conference has been scheduled for next month to resolve the most serious disagreements.

The committee will have 65 members - more than triple the number planned - to accommodate the political, ethnic and religious factions jockeying for power in any post-Hussein Iraq.

As the leaders joined in a news conference to proclaim unity, five Shiite Muslim groups denounced the agreement as U.S. propaganda that does not represent the views of the majority of Iraqis. The Shiite groups walked out of the conference in protest a day after a U.S. envoy temporarily left in frustration.

It is unclear what role the committee would play should Hussein fall. Most of the opposition leaders have been out of Iraq for decades, and the support they would have from inside Iraq is in question. And even as Bush administration officials insisted that the meeting be held, they also demanded that the conference not form a government in exile; American officials are focusing on military and tribal leaders within Iraq for support for any interim government.

Still, that the conference occurred at all was a victory of sorts. It had been postponed several times because of bickering among the opposition groups about where the meeting should be held and who should be invited. As it turned out, more than 320 delegates were involved in the discussions, though many complained that the key decisions were made by small groups meeting secretively.

"People said they couldn't do it, but they did it," Zalmay Khalilzad, the Bush administration's envoy to the conference, said in a statement. "You have to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it is a positive step in the right direction."

Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said the conference highlighted the divisions among the opposition groups and was emblematic of disagreements within the Bush administration about how to manage Iraq if Hussein is ousted.

The Pentagon and White House seem open to an interim government led by Iraqi exiles, he said, but State Department and CIA officials see that as unworkable and favor a government formed from within Iraq. The conference, Samore said, leaves the options open.

"There is an underlying disagreement in Washington between those who would settle for a Sunni general prepared to disarm and those who think the U.S. ought to be searching for a real move to democracy," Samore said. "This is a logical compromise between different policy options in Washington. You put a meeting together that pretends to show a united opposition so that the option of using those guys appears real. Whether it is or not is anybody's guess."

If the Bush administration's goal was to show the world pictures of the opposition groups united as one, it may have succeeded. During yesterday's news conference, 34 television cameras were present. But they were not permitted in the conference room where disagreements were aired, and they were not in the hotel bar when two robed Shiite delegates - one from a conservative party and one from a liberal party - got into a shoving match and were separated as their fists were raised.

Leaders of the opposition groups, which receive millions of dollars from the United States and are vying for power in a new government, glossed over their disagreements and proclaimed that progress had been made in plans to transform their country.

In addition to agreeing on the number of committee members, the conference produced a document that leaders called a blueprint for a new Iraq. It calls for a peaceful transformation from dictatorship to democracy while maintaining the country's borders. It states that Iraqis should vote as soon as possible on whether to return to a constitutional monarchy, with a king as its figurehead, as existed before the military coup in 1958.

Opposition leaders dodged questions about the exact makeup of the committee, saying it represented all Iraqis and that they would not categorize members according to political, ethnic or religious affiliations. The conference, which began with unofficial meetings Friday, had been extended by two days because of disagreements over who would control the group.

A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress said disagreements remained and that more committee members would likely be named to soothe lingering anger.

"We want Iraq to be free of sectarian and ethnic conflict, where all its people can participate freely and democratically," said Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, explaining to reporters why the committee members would not be identified by affiliation.

Delegates acknowledged privately that 32 of the 65 seats now allocated would be filled by Shiite Muslims under the arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is based in Iran and has deep ties to the government there.

Sheik Jamal al-Wakil, a delegate who walked out of the conference in protest, said his Islamic Accord Organization and four other Shiite groups do not accept the configuration of the committee because it gives too much power to conservative Islamic groups such as the Supreme Council and not enough to more liberal Islamic groups.

"From the beginning [of the conference] until today we tried to work with these people, but from the beginning the decisions were cooked in private meetings and we were ignored," he told reporters. "This is another dictatorship that we reject. We refuse to accept a resolution which will be passed by this conference, which will give only one group ultimate control over Iraqi Shiites."

His comments showed that the divisions existing before the conference had not been eliminated. While the groups that walked out included only about 30 of 320 delegates, deeper disagreements were settled by not settling them - they were put off.

Chief among the decisions yet to be made is who should lead the committee. Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, said another conference would be held Jan. 15 in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq to address that issue. Whether a three-person "sovereignty council" should operate as a temporary head of state during any overthrow was debated heatedly then tabled for another day.