"Yes to freedom ... Yes to Islam ... No to America, No to Saddam," the huge crowd chanted in the centre of this southern Iraqi city.

Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim opposition group was boycotting the meeting and another key leader was sending only a representative, amid both distrust about the US role and internal division over who should lead Iraq in the future.

Even as the United States and its coalition partner Britain insisted they were working quickly to bring about an elected government, the meeting was held under high security out of the public eye on a secluded air base outside Nasiriyah.

The meeting, the first of its kind since Saddam Hussein's fall last week, had been due to start around 0600 GMT but there was no immediate word if it was underway more than two hours later. The number of journalists was limited by the US military.

Dozens of representatives from Iraq's fractious mix of ethnic, tribal and opposition groups, including those formerly in exile, were said to be invited although no official list was given.

The Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), the main Shiite opposition faction whose presence in neighbouring Iran was long a source of tension between Tehran and Saddam's Baghdad regime, said it would not take part.

"We refuse to put ourselves under the thumb of the Americans or any other country, because that is not in the Iraqis' interests," said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the group's number two.

"We have been told that the aim of the meeting is to discuss setting up a government and not actually setting it up. What we badly need is a provisional Iraqi government."

Retired US general Jay Garner, tapped by the United States to lead the interim government, was to chair the meeting. Many Iraqis are wary of what they see as a US bid to control the nation and its vast oil resources.

After the conference, Garner will return to Kuwait, members of the retired general's staff told the New York Times, complaining the US army Central Command was preventing Garner from travelling on to Baghdad out of security concerns.

Iraq has already witnessed religious violence since the fall of Saddam, with a leading cleric seen as pro-US assassinated in the holy city of Najaf and another threatened by armed gangs who have called for him to flee the country.

In downtown Nasiriyah, religious figures led a crowd estimated by journalists at 20,000 by mid-morning while the opposition meeting was being convened.

"The popular and religious forces that have organised this demonstration feel that the Hawza (school of religious leaders) in Najaf is the sole representative of the Iraqi people," an imam, Warrad Nasrallah, told AFP.

"We want the American and British forces to go. They have freed us from Saddam and their job is finished," said Ihsan Mohammad, an official with a regional federation of engineers.

The US delegation was to be led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House special representative to the Iraqi opposition, who also played a pivotal role in setting up the government in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

Ahmad Chalabi, the man long tipped to be the next leader of Iraq, also declined to attend but was sending a representative, even though he has headquarters little more than a stone's throw from Tallil air base, the venue of the meeting.

Chalabi, who has lived in exile most of his life, has recently been the subject of internal squabbling within the US administration even though his umbrella Iraqi National Congress has had solid backing from Washington.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking at US Central Command's war headquarters in Qatar, played down talk of division among the Shiite Muslim majority who were pinned under Baghdad's thumb by Saddam's Sunni Muslim minority.

"Under the Saddam regime they would have ended up in the torture chambers in Basra if they'd expressed opinions like that or would have ended up dead," Straw told a press conference Tuesday.

He insisted the United Nations would play a "vital role" but again cautioned the fractured UN Security Council, which was deeply divided over the war, would have to "accepot that there is a new reality in Iraq".

The United Nations was expected to attend the Nasiriyah meeting in the role of observer.

Straw underlined that Tuesday's meeting was the first of many to come as the two powers chart their course for Iraq's future.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, has told parliament he hopes to see an elected government in place in Iraq next year.

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SPACE.WIRE