LONDON, December 14 (News Agencies) - Iraqi dissidents starting a two-day conference in London Saturday, December 14, hope they can confound Iraqi opposition-bashers by gathering under one roof even if their differences were in evidence in the run-up to the meeting.

They have also been at pains to deny that their agenda is tailored to U.S. specifications while acknowledging that their effort to map out a common strategy for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq is based on the assumption that Washington will spearhead regime change in Baghdad, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"We have no obligation to be one organization. (But) we are united in our struggle for a democratic Iraq," Al-Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, leader of the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, told reporters here.

His group is one of six organizers who held endless meetings over the past few days trying to sort out differences over the final list of participants, chiefly over the "independent" dissidents invited to attend along with various opposition factions -- a total of around 325.

The arguments over representation have been described by opposition-watchers as an indication of the rivalries that have plagued the Iraqi opposition for nearly a decade and prompted critics to charge that the main dissident groups have ruled out forming a government in exile only because they would never be able to agree on its makeup.

"The Iraqi opposition is being belittled by its adversaries and by the Baghdad regime," Washington-based former general Najib al-Salhi, one of the participants, protested earlier this week.

But organizers have found it difficult to brush off differences over how closely the Iraqi opposition should be identified with the United States and its plans for Iraq.

While the Tehran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) says it refuses to receive U.S. aid, the Constitutional Monarchy Movement and the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmad Chalabi have thrown their weight behind a document charting a course to a democratic Iraq that was drawn up by a U.S.-sponsored Iraqi working group.

"The Americans wanted a broad-based conference. Even for American public opinion, it is important that the Iraqi opposition closes ranks" to serve as a credible partner while the Bush administration plans the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, said one participant who did not wish to be identified.

Zalmay Khalilzad, recently appointed as President George W. Bush's pointman on regime change in Iraq, will head a U.S. delegation of observers Saturday, SAIRI's London representative Hamed al-Bayati told AFP.

But claims that the U.S. envoy has been attending meetings of leaders of the organizing groups to help smooth out differences are "not true," he said.

"I am pleased that the conference is taking place, but I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume, to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi in remarks published Saturday when asked if the Iraqi opposition offered a "real alternative" to Saddam.

"The United States has a problem with the (Iraqi) regime, and we have a problem with the regime. There is a convergence of interests," said Sheikh Mohsen al-Husseini, a Shiite scholar serving as secretary-general of the Tehran-based Organization of Islamic Action in Iraq.

"If the United States prevents Saddam from using tanks and planes, the Iraqi people are capable of changing the regime themselves," he said.

Other dissidents have likewise made the point that regime change should ideally be the work of the Iraqi people, albeit with external help, which they say no one other than Washington seems ready to extend.