He was commenting on reports that SAIRI had expressed dissatisfaction over Iranian official position stating it would not allow Iraqi opposition using Iranian territory in case the United states attacks Iraq in a drive to topple Saddam Hoseyn's regime.

Speaking to an IPS reported minutes before the official start of the "Congress of Iraqi Opposition for Democracy and Salvation of Iraq" in a hotel in central London, Mr. Hakim conceded that there are "some differences" between SAIRI and the ayatollahs who rule over neighbouring Iran, but nevertheless, he praised the support Iran has provided to both his organisation as well as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees, both Shi’a and Kurds.

On the Conference, the largest of Iraqi opposition groups ever organised, he said since all the participants have agreed on the main agenda, there should be "no major difficulties in overcoming minor differences that exists in the formation of a follow up committee".

The meeting aims at presenting a road map acceptable for all the opposition in the one hand and offer plans for a "tolerant, free, democratic, parliamentarian, pluralistic Iraq based on a federal system open to all Iraqi without any discrimination", on the other.

The meeting had been postponed three times due to various type of differences and argumentations between the major forces, mostly the Shi’ites who forms the majority of the Iraqi population and the Kurds, who are the best armed and most efficient components of the Iraqi people, as they have been ruling themselves for the past decade.

With one exception from general Hasan al Naqib, who said the issue of federalism "must be left to the decision of the Iraqi people after the fall of Saddam", all the ten speakers at the Saturday opening session stressed on the same "fundamental principles" concerning the future regime of Iraq and pressed for ending the "brutal, ruthless" dictatorship of Saddam Hoseyn "with the help from Washington to the Iraqi people", a veiled call to the United States to refrain from attacking Iraq.

"The United States should not attack Iraq, but help the people to liberate their homeland", Ayatollah Aziz al Hakim told IPS, but did not spelled out how the Iraqis could overthrow Saddam and his strongly armed and dedicated Presidential Guard without any direct military assistance from outside, mostly the US.

Besides Mr. Khalizad, officials from neighbouring countries like Iran and Kuwait, both attacked by Saddam Hoseyn, as well as from Turkey also attended the opening session, according to conference sources.

However, Iran, showing its displeasure with the conference and in sign of support for its bitter foe, ignored the London meeting, despite the presence of journalists and cameramen from Iranian official media like IRNA and Television.

"This unprecedented conference in the history of the Iraqi opposition is taking place in a sensitive internal and international situation, when the world has finally realised that the present Iraqi dictatorship under Saddam Hoseyn present a great and potential danger for, which must be eradicated the soonest possible. In this challenge, the Iraqis must play the main role", said Ayatollah Aziz, reading a message from his brother, Ayatollah Baqer al Hakim to the Conference.

Though the message said the future Iraqi government must take "inspiration and model from Islam", yet it emphasised on the "necessity of keeping unity and brotherhood among all Iraqi opposition forces without any distinction", mostly during the transitional period.

"Though the Kurds have suffered badly from Saddam Hoseyn’s ethnic cleansing and massacre, just because they are Kurds, yet we are also struggling for a democratic regime inside a unified Iraq, putting an end to the suffering of all the Iraqis and for that, we are ready to offer our political experience", he said, adding: "No one should fear federalism, as this is a system working in more than 70 nations around the world".

In his intervention, Mr. Ahmad Chalabi, the US-backed President of the INC regretted that the nations that equipped Saddam with his weapons of mass destruction are "punishing the Iraqi people for having them", referring to the U.N. sanctions on Iraq that have destroyed its economy but left Saddam in power.

"The United States have let us down many times, but I am proud to say that President Bush has adopted the opposition's program for democracy in Iraq" he added.

As the delegates arrived at the conference, they were met by a protest of around 50 people organised by the Workers' Communist Party of Iraq, which opposes Saddam but places little faith in the conference.

"These people are taking their orders from George Bush and Tony Blair", one of the protesters, Sa’id Arman, told the British news agency Reuters.

"They will run Iraq by the gun", he added, as the protesters shouted "No to War" and waved their party flag.

The London meeting comes as President Bush, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair as his closest ally, keeps up the pressure on Saddam to abide by U.N. resolutions and disclose and destroy any weapons of mass destruction Iraq may possess.

She also called on the opposition to give more room for Iraqi women, a call strongly backed by Mrs. Saffia Soheil, the only woman in the panel, who reminded that Iraq "belonged to all Iraqis, including the women that make half of the nation’s 20 millions inhabitants.

"All Iraqis without any exception of race or religion, women and men, Kurds, or Turkmen or Assyrians, Shi’as or Sunnis or Christians, religious or seculars, must be equal and take part in the running of a nation that has badly suffered from more a decade of dictatorship, women more than men", she pointed out, while regretting the weak presence of the women at the conference.

Though Prince Ali and other delegates stressed that Iraq has the necessary cadres to run the nation effectively after the fall of Saddam, but international and independent observers said the exception of the Kurds, the Iraqis outside had no experience in running a government.

"The extent to which the Iraq delegates have support in their homeland is unclear. Saddam has now been in power for 30 years and most of the delegates have been in exile for decades", Mr. George Jaffee, a veteran expert of the Middle East told the BBC.