"If they try to exclude us, we will see what our position will be. So far this is not the case," Hamed al-Bayati, London representative of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), told AFP.

He was replying to a question about the sudden surfacing of a prominent Shiite opposition cleric, who has been based in London since the crushed 1991 Shiite uprising in southern Iraq, in the central Shiite holy city of Najaf.

Sayyed Abdelmajid al-Khoei, speaking by telephone to Dubai-based MBC television on Thursday, accused pro-government Iraqi militiamen of using Najaf residents as "human shields" around a revered tomb in their fight against coalition forces who he said control most of the city.

Footage aired by CNN cable news on Thursday gave a different picture, showing an angry crowd of Najaf residents preventing troops of the US 101st Airborne Division from approaching the Ali Mosque, a sacred Shiite site.

According to Arab press reports Friday, Khoei, whose late father was a leading Shiite religious authority, reached Najaf with the help of US forces. But there were conflicting accounts on whether he had crossed from Kuwait or Jordan.

One report claimed his return to Najaf had unsettled Iranian conservatives and Tehran-based SAIRI, which says it has instructed its armed wing and its sympathizers in Iraq to remain "neutral" in the war launched by the United States and Britain on March 20 to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it clear last week that Washington did not want to see SAIRI's Badr armed wing active inside Iraq.

"The Badr Corps is trained, equipped and directed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard and we will hold the Iranian government responsible for their actions and will view Badr Corps activity inside Iraq as unhelpful," he said.

Bayati denied that Khoei's return to Najaf indicated the United States was promoting a "moderate" pro-American current among Iraq's majority Shiite community, at the expense of SAIRI, at a time when Washington is preparing to govern a post-Saddam Iraq.

Unlike SAIRI, Khoei had "consistently called for cooperating with US forces," he said.

SAIRI continues to have contacts with the United States, but this does not mean Washington does not have contacts with other Iraqi Shiite opposition figures and groups, Bayati added.

SAIRI, which has thousands of fighters under its command, is a member of an opposition "leadership council" now operating out of Kurdish-held northern Iraq and seen as a likely component of a future interim authority in a post-Saddam Iraq.

SPACE.WIRE