NASIRIYAH, Iraq, April 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Iraq's opposition groups were due to meet Tuesday, April 15, for the first time since Saddam Hussein's fall, but the man widely tipped to be the country's next leader will be noticeable by his absence and stubbornly insists he is not a candidate.

Ahmad Chalabi said Sunday, April 13, he would send a representative to the gathering in the southern town of Nasiriyah, where the United States is expected to lay out its vision of a post-Saddam Iraq.

However, amid already extensive skepticism about U.S. plans for remaking the country, Chalabi - who has lived in exile most of his life - has backing from only parts of the U.S. administration and remains an unknown quantity for most Iraqis.

And he himself has repeatedly said he has no plans to seek political office in any future Iraqi government, despite frequent reports that the 57-year-old is Washington's preferred candidate.

"Absolutely not. I am not a candidate for any post," Chalabi told France's Le Monde newspaper in an interview published Monday when asked if he intended to play a political role in postwar Iraq.

He wanted only to "participate in the rebuilding of civil society, which has been completely destroyed and corrupted."

U.S. government officials were at pains Monday, April 14, to point out that Chalabi was not the American favorite to run the country.

"Chalabi is one of the recognized leaders of the opposition to Saddam Hussein. We also have contacts with a number of other leaders," they said on condition of anonymity at US Central Command in Qatar, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

And on the ground in Iraq, Chalabi was not being hailed as a returning hero.

"We don't know him, I don't think any Iraqi knows anything about him," said Sheikh Abdul Hakim Sultan, a Shiite Muslim cleric in Nasiriyah.

Another Iraqi, speaking to AFP at a local hospital, said: "We want a leader who is from inside Iraq. Chalabi, we don't know him."

An internal feud over Iraq has emerged in Washington between the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency on one side and the Pentagon and parts of the White House on the other, much of it surrounding Chalabi.

Chalabi has riled the CIA and State Department, which only two weeks ago restored some funding to his Iraqi National Congress (INC) that had been suspended last year over management concerns, with his flamboyant style and pronouncements.

There is also continuing controversy over how central a role the United Nations should play in the rebuilding of Iraq.

The U.S. officials briefing anonymously in Qatar Monday said: "We do think there will be a UN role in there, but they won't be the ruling partner."

The White House special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, Zalmay Khalilzad, will chair the Nasiriyah meeting along with Ryan Crocker, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

"We expect this to be the first in a series of regional meetings that will provide a forum for Iraqis to discuss their vision of the future and their ideas regarding the Iraqi Interim Authority," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"We hope these meetings will culminate in a nationwide conference that can be held in Baghdad in order to form the Iraqi Interim Authority," he said.

The official invitation list has not been released, but groups such as the Iraqi National Accord, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Islamic Al-Dawa - as well as Chalabi's umbrella INC - are expected to be on hand.

Some of Saddam's former ruling - and widely reviled - Baath party members will be present, but no senior leaders, the U.S. officials in Qatar said.

"There is an objective to determine a manner of 'de-Baathification' but also reconciliation," they said.

Retired U.S. general Jay Garner has already been tapped by Washington to head the civilian component of the U.S. military occupation government that will eventually work alongside and then cede power to the Iraqi Interim Authority.

But with the war not yet finished, many in Iraq are already ratcheting up the pressure for the United States to hand things over quickly.

Tehran-based Group Not Attending

Iraq's biggest Shiite opposition group, the Iran-based Supreme Assembly for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), will not be represented at Tuesday's U.S.-brokered meeting of opposition figures in Iraq, its number two said Monday, April 14.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim told a press conference here that "we will not participate at the meeting in Nasiriyah, and we have told that to the Americans and to other countries."