The conference, in a posh central London hotel, brought some 350 Iraqi organisations and private individual as well as a few women, most of them, but particularly the most important ones, bitterly opposed to each other.

"Blessed" by the United States, which had modelled the conference on the basis of the one it had organised for the Afghan forces fighting to the Taleban in Bonn, Germany last year, the participants had almost no other choice but to reach an agreement or to be left on their own faith, sources said.

The mention of a "federal" state might be a concession to the three millions Iraqi Kurds who also represents the strongest force against Saddam Hoseyn and his well equipped armies, which the document says must be "depolitised".

The document also recognise officially the discrimination against the Shi’ite Muslims, who are in majority in Iraq and have been ruthlessly repressed by the Sunni-dominated Ba’th Party.

However, the document rejects publicly any American supervision over the transitional Administration, as is suggested by some adviser to President George W. Bush, who’s Special Envoy, the Afghan-born Zalmay Khalizad was present at the conference, encouraging the senior opposition leaders, the Kurds, the Shi’ites and the Iraqi National Congress to put aside their differences and concentrate on their converging points.