arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Nevertheless, about 70 officers are expected, the organisers say. After an open meeting tonight, which the many Iraqi opposition parties will attend or boycott according to their inclinations, the Magnificent Seventy will spend the weekend gunning for Saddam Hussein behind closed doors.

The White House, the Pentagon and the state department, which do not always see eye to eye on Iraq, are sending representatives to watch the proceedings, and possibly each other.

Although all the participants want to rid the world of President Saddam, there is a wariness about the intentions of the US and their fellow officers to overcome. But the organisers, Major-General Tawfiq al-Yasiri and Brigadier Saad al-Obaidy, are encouraged by the response.

"Our aim is to collect many officers and discuss strategy," said Brig Obaidy, who was formerly in charge of Saddam's psychological warfare. "We'll discuss how to change the regime, and the role of the army and democracy in the future of Iraq."

The key purpose of the meeting, according to opposition sources, is to secure the officers' agreement to step back and allow democratic government to develop if President Saddam is overthrown.

But Gen Khazraji has already shown his eagerness to take over the leadership. In a newspaper interview earlier this year he described it as an honour and "a sacred duty" - a remark that has left many in the opposition suspicious of his ambitions.

More recently he has been linked in the Arab press to an alternative plan for a ruling military council of between seven and 10 senior officers.

GenKhazraji, who was chief of staff and led the army through the Iran-Iraq war and the invasion of Kuwait, now lives in Denmark, where a Kurdish group has sought to have him prosecuted for war crimes.

This relates to his alleged role in the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.

Gen Khazraji says the allegation was invented by Iraqi intelligence, and the London meeting organisers say they have no dispute with him.

"He is our friend, we have good relations with him," said Brig Obaidy. But Gen Khazraji said by telephone "I don't attend such conferences," and declined to discuss it further.

Major-General Wafiq al-Samara'i, former head of an Iraqi military intelligence unit, who now lives in London, is also understood to have reservations about the meeting, though it is unclear whether he will attend. He is close to GenKhazraji and both are regarded as politically close to Saudi Arabia.