960405

Iraqi opposition ends talks without agreement

Damascus: Leaders of 10 Iraqi opposition groups ended unity talks in Damascus on Thursday without reaching specific agreement on their plans to topple Iraq's President Saddam Hussein.

As representatives struggled to agree on a final statement, Ayatollah Baqer al-Hakim, leader of the Shi'ite Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told reporters the meeting had ended and the talks covered general issues.

"Some of the decisions we made are secret and will not be revealed," he said.

He said the meeting agreed on the holding of a larger gathering of the Iraqi opposition but added that no date or venue had yet been fixed.

The meeting was originally designed to prepare for the holding of a gathering of more than 40 opposition leaders in Damascus in the second week of April.

Shortly after opening of the conference on Wednesday the meeting faced splits, with Islamists asking for thee head of the Iraqi Communist Party to be excluded.

The conference originally grouped 11 leaders representing Kurdish, Islamic, nationalist and Communist factions.

Fawzi al-Rawi, an Iraqi who heads Iraqi affairs at Syria's Baath Party, told reporters earlier that the meeting would stress the necessity of preserving Iraq's unity and its territorial integrity.

Rawi said the Damascus meeting was not a reply to a call by King Hussein of Jordan for the establishment of a federation in Iraq. But he acknowledged that Syria had "responded positively to our call for the convening of the meeting to stress the necessity of preserving Iraq's unity".

Rawi condemned King Hussein's proposal and accused the Jordanian monarch of "promoting Israeli ideas".

"King Hussein's call is a Zionist plan aimed at facilitating the penetration of Israel into the Arab world through Jordan. This is a dangerous plan which affects the whole region," Rawi said.

He expressed regret at the banishing of Iraqi Communist Partry leader Humaid Majeed from the meeting, saying the absence of the Communists had weakened the opposition.

"We as a nationalist group were not pleased with the exclusion of the Communist Party from the meeting although we believe that no political force could cancel the role of any other group," he said.

Conference sources said two Islamic Shi'ite groups demanded the departure of the Communist chief and threatened to boycott the talks it he did not go.-Reuter