New Iraqi Government Facing Its First Big Test

Jockeying Over National Conference, to Begin Thursday, Intensifies Ethnic, Religious Tensions

Iraq's fragile new government faces its first big political test this week: holding a national conference that is a pivotal element of the country's postwar evolution but that U.S. and Iraqi officials fear may be boycotted by key players, hijacked by religious parties, targeted by insurgents or simply overwhelmed by bickering.

The three-day conference of 1,000 Iraqis is scheduled to begin Thursday, Iraqi officials said. Its goal is to select a council of 100 members that would oversee the interim government and have the power to overturn its decisions.

But uncertainty over who would attend the conference has exacerbated tensions among Iraq's disparate ethnic, political and religious groups while also raising questions about what effect the final 100-member body would have on the country's future governance. It also remains unclear how the conference would select the council.

The Bush administration is heralding the conference as evidence that its political program for postwar Iraq is succeeding. "The conference will constitute the first opportunity after the transfer of sovereignty for Iraqis from all over the country representing every part of civil society to come together and discuss national issues, and to give their one-month stamp of understanding and approval to the interim government," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday in a speech at the U.S. Institute for Peace, a federally funded group.

At the same time, the United States is trying to stay on the sidelines as Iraqis organize the conference. But the effort to show that Iraqis are running the show a month after the handover of political power is stirring deep anxieties about how the process will play out without American expertise.

"We need to stay out of the way. We can counsel, which is why we have an embassy. But we're not going to make these decisions for them," said a senior State Department official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

The conference, often compared to the loya jirga in which Afghans chose their interim leadership in 2002, is an important dry run for the even bigger challenge of holding Iraq's national elections by the end of January.

If the conference succeeds, public support for the new government and the elections would likely increase. If it is delayed or perceived as flawed, however, it could alter the timing and credibility of the entire U.S.-brokered political transition, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

So far, preparations have featured intense lobbying, feisty debates and a bit of chaos, which Iraqi and U.S. officials say is proof of a burgeoning Iraqi political scene. "The big story here is that there is a political process and therefore uncertainty," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih.

But in a sign of how much still has to be sorted out, conference organizers have not yet decided how to pick the 100 council members. U.N. advisers proposed that anyone with 10 votes should win a seat.

A bigger problem is whether all ethnic and religious groups would be fully involved in the conference. Interest has been strong in southern Iraq, which is populated mostly by the Shiite Muslims who account for about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people. Brutally repressed by President Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated Baath Party government, the Shiites are eager to move Iraq closer to majority rule. But in the Sunni heartland of central Iraq and in northern areas where ethnic Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens are maneuvering for power, the conference is less popular, Iraqi officials said.

Bringing in the Sunni minority, which was largely on the fringe during the U.S. occupation, is most critical, officials said. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has said that by drawing as many Sunnis as possible into the conference process, the interim government can fracture a key component of the insurgency.

"Allawi's broader strategy is to co-opt the insurgents without blood on their hands. He and others have made clear that this is a big-tent event and they're not going to try to exclude all extremists," the senior State Department official said.

But key Sunnis say that snags in organizing the conference threaten to create a backlash among cooperative Sunnis. "There are a lot of people not happy about what's going on. There were supposed to be application forms, but they weren't distributed, so many people didn't know how the process was supposed to happen," said Hatem Mukhlis, a former New York doctor who returned from exile after the war.