Iraqi Exiles Edge Warily Toward Unity

In a fragile display of unity, Iraqi opposition groups agreed Monday to create a joint coordinating committee and a plan to establish democracy in Iraq if Saddam Hussein falls.

Leaders announced the accord after a sleepless weekend of negotiations at a two-day conference that brought together more than 320 delegates from Europe, the Middle East and the United States. But longtime rifts among the Iraqi exiles forced them to continue negotiations Monday over some of the appointments to the new committee.

Comprising about 50 members, the committee will try to represent an array of political parties and independent activists who are divided by ethnicity, religion, ideology and tragic history. It will design a blueprint for an eventual transitional government in which the opposition hopes to play a significant role.

However, it remained unclear how major a role the opposition will be allowed to play should the United States use force to unseat Hussein. U.S. officials have floated various plans for a post-Hussein Iraq, including installing a civilian administrator from outside the country.

Still, dissidents were enthusiastic about how far they had come. “We are entering a very sensitive era of our history,” said Hamid Bayati of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim group based in Iran. “We need a strong, powerful committee, but we need it to be as representative as possible.”

The Shiite group generated the toughest conflict at the conference, according to activists, who said the late-night talks involved consultations with U.S. government observers and conference calls to Iran. Shiites, who make up about 60% of Iraq’s population, will get about 16 seats on the committee. But the group clashed with other Shiites over control of appointments and asked for an additional 24 hours to come up with the names, activists said.

That delay provoked tensions with the U.S. officials, who have worked with the supreme council but remain wary of its Iranian ties, according to accounts by participants. Nonetheless, activists predicted that the lingering dispute would be resolved by today.

“All the other names have been selected except for the Shiite seats,” said a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, a coalition of exile groups that has clout with the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. “It was a very successful conference. You had people who are supposedly great enemies hugging one another, laughing and joking.”

The biggest achievement was that the event took place at all. The debate was fierce but the mood festive among delegates in three-piece suits, Islamic clerical robes or tribal outfits. They spent the weekend attending public meetings, holding secretive strategy sessions and roaming a luxury hotel packed with security guards, journalists, Asian tourists and British party-goers in formal attire.

In recent months, infighting delayed the conference several times despite a growing sense of urgency as the international community’s confrontation with Iraq intensified. Critics said the rival groups’ failure to sit down and talk had become a symbol of their dysfunction and their distance from the reality of Iraq.

It took prodding from the U.S. to bring about the London gathering, which was organized by the supreme council, the INC, two Kurdish parties, a constitutional monarchist group and a faction dominated by political and military defectors. Washington policymakers regard the unification of anti-Hussein forces outside Iraq as an important element in making the diplomatic campaign against the Baghdad regime broad-based and palatable to international opinion.

Leading an observer delegation of U.S. diplomats and defense and national security officials was Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush’s special envoy to the Iraqi opposition. Khalilzad worked behind the scenes but gave a speech Saturday in which he told delegates that it was time to disprove the “soft bigotry of low expectations” by showing that Iraqis are ready for democracy.

“The eyes of the world are on those participating in this conference at this momentous time,” said Khalilzad, who is also a special envoy to Afghanistan and attended the conference last year in Germany that laid the framework for the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “I hope and expect that they will not be disappointed.”

The exiles’ ambitions depend partly on factors beyond their control: the U.N. effort to disarm Iraq, a potential U.S. invasion and wild-card scenarios such as a coup. Although some exiles see their new committee as the embryo of a transitional government, others acknowledge Iraq’s next leaders might emerge inside the country.

“What everybody needs to realize is that whatever happens here is temporary,” said Fawzi Hariri of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two parties that govern a semi-autonomous enclave in northern Iraq. “The final decision will be made in Iraq at the ballot box.”

The conference produced signs of progress. Most participants endorsed the concept of a federal structure for Iraq, a vital issue for the Kurds. But others, including the government of neighboring Turkey, fear that federalism could splinter the nation among Kurds in the north; the Sunni elite in the center, including Baghdad; and Shiites in the south.