The INC and the other formerly exiled factions with which the United States began elaborating its plans for the transition cannot accept the new proposals, spokesman Entifadh Qanbar said.

He said US overseer Paul Bremer had no right to scrap a promised national conference to choose the interim administration, which the INC and other members of a seven-strong leadership council had hoped to lead.

"The United States can't cancel a conference that is led by Iraqis," the INC spokesman said.

"The leadership council is unified around it ... This is an Iraq-led effort. It isn't a US issue.

"We're serious about having this conference. The conference will go on ... as soon as possible."

The leadership council was told on Sunday of the abandonment of the national conference promised by Bremer's predecessor, retired general Jay Garner, but since twice delayed.

Bremer said he had decided to appoint an interim administration through informal consultations to get it up and running more quickly and less divisively, aides said.

The US overseer also told the seven that it was the last time he would be meeting with them alone.

"This group will be subsumed into a larger group of Iraqi political society with a view to trying to establish both the Iraqi political council and the constitutional convention as soon as possible," a spokesman said Tuesday.

The 25- to 30-member political council is to head the interim administration and name "key advisors" to Iraq's ministries who will work in close coordination with the coalition's own overseers, a senior authority official said this week.

The much larger convention will draft a new constitution and submit it to the council for ratification and submission to a nationwide referendum to pave the way for the election of a sovereign democratic government.

The spokesman rejected suggestions that, without a national conference, the two bodies would be "handpicked," insisting that the administration expected to forge "an emerging consensus" on their membership through its consultations with Iraqis.

He denied that the change of plan was a "repudiation of the INC," which contributed troops to a Free Iraqi Forces militia that fought with the coalition.

He also insisted that, despite the reservations expressed by Qanbar, there had been a "good initial welcome" for Bremer's proposals when he presented them to the leadership council on Sunday.

However, Qanbar took issue with the fact that ultimate authority will rest with the US-led coalition until a government is formed.

"These councils are going to work as advisory boards and lack any type of executive power," he complained.

"(Bremer) will be the only person who'll make executive decisions. We believe this is not appropriate."

Qanbar said the INC was still lobbying intensively in Washington as well as in Baghdad to secure a caretaker government with executive powers, even though Resolution 1483 passed by the UN Security Council last month talks only of an interim administration.

"Our goal is to ... have an interim government," he said. "We have a very intensive conversation with Mr. Bremer and the US government to emphasize that."

Under the new proposals, the advisors named by the political council will be given progressively greater responsibilities until they become interim ministers.

But coalition officials have made clear that they have no intention of handing sovereign executive or fiscal power to unelected Iraqi politicians, and that "ultimate authority" will remain with them until a democratic government has been installed.

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