Exile groups' efforts stalled by rivalries

Three months after the Bush administration encouraged them to unite and create a common political platform for the future of their country, Iraq's exile factions are locked in an ethnic, religious and political power struggle.

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Three months after the Bush administration encouraged them to unite and create a common political platform for the future of their country, Iraq's exile factions are locked in an ethnic, religious and political power struggle.

Potentially important players are fighting tenaciously over rival agendas. One of the major factions, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is also feuding with the State Department over $8 million in funding for propaganda, humanitarian and other programmes it is supposed to oversee, State Department officials said.

A much-heralded INC "information-gathering'' operation inside Iraq has yet to get off the ground, the officials said, because of uncertainty in the Bush administration about the INC's ability to get and relay useful intelligence, as well as competing views within the Washington bureaucracy.

Also stalled are the preparations for a pan-opposition conference that was meant to project a vision for democratic rule if President Saddam Hussain is overthrown. The conference was originally scheduled for late September, but has been repeatedly postponed.

The next possible date is November 22, in Brussels, but the INC is threatening a boycott. The State Department plans to send a delegate to London soon to meet with opposition officials to end the infighting that has blocked the conference, a department official said.

The arguing has put into doubt a role for Iraqi exiles in the country's future and presents a grim preview of problems for any U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Some of the disputes are based on ethnic suspicions and religious rivalries. During his decades in power, Saddam has tamped down such conflicts through repression. But by President Bush's reckoning, the new Iraq is supposed to resolve its problems within a democratic system.

The Bush administration officially recognises six opposition organisations. One is the INC, an amalgam of anti-Saddam groups. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party represent the Kurdish population, based in northern Iraq.

The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), an Iranian-based group, claims to represent the majority population. The Iraqi National Accord is composed of former army officers and defectors from Saddam's Baathist party.

Also thrown into the mix is a monarchist party that embodies the aspirations of Sharif Ali bin Al Hussein, an exiled aristocrat.

Bush also has authorised expansion of the opposition organisations to include groups representing other former military officers and Turkish, Assyrian and Christian minorities.

The INC leader, Ahmed Chalabi, may boycott the conference over the scope of its agenda, the number of delegates and the quotas given invited organisations.

Chalabi had wanted the conference to endorse a provisional government, with him as its leader. He also wanted upwards of 300 delegates chosen partly on the basis of profession, gender and politics, not solely because of ethnicity or religion.

The Kurdish parties, SCIRI and the Iraqi National Accord combined to squash the provisional government idea and other Chalabi proposals, and to limit the conference to about 180 participants.

Shiite representatives would make up about 35 per cent of the delegates, a quota that offended secular Iraqis such as Chalabi. The Kurds would make up 25 per cent, Turks and Assyrians 10 per cent.

© Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service

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