Global Policy Forum

By C. J. Chivers

With the rounds of quarreling and reduced expectations, a conference for Iraqi opposition groups devoted to replacing Saddam Hussein's government has been moved from Belgium to London and delayed until mid-December, opposition groups said today.

The announcement came on the day when one opposition figure, an Iraqi general who defected in 1995, was charged in Denmark with taking part in war crimes. The paired events displayed the shifting fortunes and uncertainty among those who wish to replace Mr. Hussein.

The conference, originally set for September, had been scheduled for this week in Brussels. The opposition groups hoped to declare unity and forge an agreement on how to govern Iraq should Mr. Hussein and his Arab Baath Socialist Party be ousted from power.

But plans fell apart last week over disagreements about who would be invited to attend, the proportion of delegates for various ethnic and religious groups and the agenda itself. There were also problems arranging visas for the delegates and their entourages.

The proposed new date and place emerged only after several groups met this weekend with a four-member team from the State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council, which pressed them to resolve their differences and reconsider their agenda.

Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, an opposition leader and descendant of the Hashemite royal family that was displaced in a coup in 1958, said the conference was tentatively set to begin on Dec. 10 or 11, here in London. He said that to represent the breadth of the opposition it might include as many as 400 delegates, far more than the 100 originally invited, or the 300 agreed on last weekend.

Its planned agenda will be much less ambitious than many opposition figures had sought. If the conference is successful, he said, it would probably lead to a statement of political principles and perhaps selection of an advisory group to explore suggestions for a post-Hussein Iraq.

It will not be considering issues some factions regard as essential, like the concept of a federal government with regional autonomy for different groups, as Iraqi Kurds have been proposing with zeal.

An American official said, though, that while the United States welcomed progress, details were not final, and that Britain had not yet agreed to be the host. "We'll have more on this when we have a host-country concurrence," he said. "That's got to be solved."

The diminished expectations in some ways reflected the political sensitivities surrounding any conference. Some opposition members said the United States and Britain were in a difficult position: on one hand accepting the recent United Nations resolution for disarming Iraq, on the other promoting a conference proposing to govern Iraq without Saddam Hussein.

A similar problem contributed to the collapse of the Brussels conference. Officially, the conference was delayed because of problems arranging visas. But opposition members here said Belgium had privately suggested that the opposition's objectives were well beyond those of other countries with an interest in the issue.

"The Belgians let it be known that the U.N. resolution is about disarming Saddam, but you want to meet about toppling him," said Dr. Mahmud Osman, a former Kurdish resistance member who is now an independent opposition delegate. "This was unacceptable."

In Denmark, Gen. Nizar al-Khazraji, 64, a former chief of staff of the Iraqi Army, was charged with crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Convention for his supposed role supervising an officer who killed civilians in Iraq in 1988. Human rights workers and Kurdish officials say that as many as 182,000 Kurds were killed in the so-called Anfal campaign, which included mass executions, the razing of scores of villages and the use of chemical weapons.

The general, who had said in a televised interview this fall that he was prepared to lead a coup against Saddam Hussein, had been under investigation in Denmark since last year, when a Kurdish refugee spotted him on the street and reported him to the police. He has previously denied a role in the campaign.

Charles A. Forrest, chief executive officer of the International Campaign to Indict Iraqi War Criminals, or Indict, a London-based organization that has been gathering war crimes evidence against 12 senior Iraqi officials, said he was cheered that a European government had accepted charges against an Iraqi leader.

Indict had not sought charges against General Khazraji. But Mr. Forrest noted that it had tried to bring charges against its primary suspects in four other nations, without success.

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