Zebari speaks with media during a press conference at the Irbil Tower Hotel, in the Kurdish controlled city of Irbil

By Ahmed Al-Zawiti, Riyad Zeinel- Din, IOL Correspondents

ARBIL, February 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The United States is trying to foil attempts to hold the Conference of Iraq's opposition factions due in the northern Iraqi enclave of Arbil , Kurdish sources said on Sunday, February 23. 

But the Iraqi opposition factions is insistent on convening the expected conference to continue preparations for a national administration to take power in the post-Saddam Hussein era, Iraqi opposition spokesman Hushiar Zebari said, hoping that the gathering would be held on Monday, February 24, or Tuesday, February 25.

Some Opposition factions would be absent from the meeting, namely the royal Constitutional movement and Al-Wifaq movement, and U.S. presidential advisor and Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is expected not to show up.

The non-participation of the two Iraqi opposition groups come under U.S. pressures in an effort to see the conference end in failure or come out with decisions rejecting all that an American military ruler be at the helm in Iraq after the looming invasion of the country and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, said Kurdish sources in a telephone interview with IslamOnline.

Meanwhile, representatives of opposition factions threw out Khalilzad's request that conference attendees would not probe forming a transitional Iraqi administration after Iraqi regime's fall and that forces belonging to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) would not carry out operations against the current of would-be Iraqi regime, added the sources.

They said that the Arbil conference would tackle forming a three-member leading institution to be a nucleus of a transitional ministerial council that would run Iraq after Saddam.

"We are determined to hold the conference, despite some skepticism over our capability to do so," Zibari said in a press conference in an Arbil hotel.

"But there is not yet a definitive date for the meeting, … we hope it would be Monday or Tuesday," said Zibari, who doubles as the KDP politburo member and foreign relations chief, adding that other 50 opposition members arrived for the conference, a number he contended legally enough to begin the coordination committee meetings.

The committee members already met on Saturday, February 21, to set the groundwork for the conference and probe the importance of all opposition groups being there. He made clear that meeting was not official, but rather deliberative.

"Delaying meetings of the Iraqi opposition is nothing new, it is so normal for us," The PUK representative in London Latif Rashid said in a press conference here.

"We had earlier postponed our meeting in Vienna and in London, as we are keen that all parties concerned attend the opposition gatherings " he added.

The Arbil conference was delayed three times, from January 15 to February  15 to February 19.

Kurds Have "Their Own Interests"

Asked about Turkey's conditions that the "special status" in Kurdistan be cancelled in return for allowing the use of its bases as launching pad in military invasion of neighboring Iraq, Zibari slammed any regional interference in the breakaway region's affairs.

"We see and appreciate that others have their own interests, but we also have our own ones that should not be ignored by others. We don't surely accept that," he said.

The two Kurdish parties ­KDP, which rules western Kurdistan, and the PUK, which controls areas bordering Turkey, together rule four million people in an area the size of Switzerland that has been outside President Saddam's control since 1991.

Ankara fears the set-up of a Kurdish country across its borders and exert every possible effort to turn the Kurdish leaders away from that end.

Also, it is gripped by the fear of a repetition of the 1991 crisis when 450,000 Iraqi Kurdish refugees flooded the country and that another Gulf war might spur a second exodus.

Turkey has demanded that its troops be allowed to take over a swath of territory along the border inside Iraq with an ostensible reason to prevent a flood of Kurdish refugees trying to flee into Turkey, but the Kurdish parties say they are quite capable of doing this themselves, read the paper.

They say the Turkish demand, to which they suspect the U.S. has agreed in return for the use of Turkish military facilities, is the first step in a Turkish plan to advance into Iraqi Kurdistan.

Zibari was deeply alarmed by U.S. intentions, which only became clear at a meeting in Ankara earlier in the month and from recent public declarations by U.S. officials.

"If the U.S. wants to impose its own government, regardless of the ethnic and religious composition of Iraq, there is going to be a backlash," he said.

And despite their fury at the practices of the central government in Baghdad, most Iraqi Kurds - living a continuous state of tension and anticipation - contend that they would rather live under a national 'unjust' regime, than be under foreign occupation.

Meanwhile, the Secretary General of the Kurdistan Islamic Party Salaheddin Baheddin has told IslamOnline that there are deep divisions in ranks of opposition groups to attend the Arbil conference.

Baheddin said the differences led Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Islamic National Council (INC), the most faction supporting the U.S., to seek forming an extensive executive council to be transformed into a cabinet after Saddam voluntarily leaves power.

But the step was opposed by the two Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution. They said Chalabi's proposal would undermine their partisan presence and influence on decision-making in the post-Saddam period.

Calls for Democracy revived

In another related development, a group of prominent Iraqi exiles, including several ex-ministers and diplomats, rejected on Sunday U.S. plans for a military administration in Iraq following any war and pressed for an alternative.

"We are very worried about any measures in this direction," the group said in a statement received in Nicosia by Agence France-Presse (AFP), commenting on plans for a military administration acknowledged by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday.

The group called on the United Nations to take charge of setting up a provisional Iraqi administration ahead of elections for a democratic regime.

With troops deployment in the Gulf region jumping to more than 200,000 in preparation for war, the United States plans to take complete, unilateral control of Iraq after the post-Saddam Hussein era, with an interim administration headed by a yet-to-be named American civilian would direct the reconstruction of Iraq and the creation of a "representative" Iraqi government, according to a now-finalized blueprint.

"We call for the will of our people to be respected, so it can exercise its legitimate right to set up a democratic regime."

"We call on the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the Security Council, to adopt this legitimate demand of our people and work to establish a provisional Iraqi administration in cooperation with the United Nations that will run the country."

This provisional regime will later "hand over power to a democratically elected Iraqi government."

Powell said Friday that following a possible conflict Washington planned to install a military command in Iraq that would also take responsibility for civilian affairs.

"As soon as we can, we would want to get the military commander to transfer real authority to a civilian leadership, perhaps initially of an international character," he said.

The New York Times has reported that the United States foresees a military command running Iraq for several months or years, similar to the post-WWII administration in Japan under General Douglas MacArthur.

On February 13, the same exiles called on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to step down to prevent a war, and again recommended a temporary Iraqi civil administration as well as a lifting of UN trade sanctions on Iraq.

The signatories include former cabinet ministers Adnan Pachachi, Abid al-Jadir, Issam al-Chalabi, Ahmad al-Habubi and Abed al-Hassan Zalzala, and two former government undersecretaries, Fadhil Chalabi and Mundir Uraim.

Pachachi, a former ambassador to the UN and foreign minister who lives in Dubai, is reportedly being considered by Washington to play a major role in post-Saddam Iraq.