According to the Australian Associated Press, the minister said an Australian delegation, headed by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade deputy secretary Peter Varghese, would attend the so-called Tallil talks.

"The Tallil meeting shouldn't be overstated in its importance, but it is certainly totemically significant because it's the first of the meetings where representatives of a wide range of Iraqi groups have come together," he said.

He said the meeting is mainly aimed at "building grassroots support for the emergence of a new Iraqi constitution and government," and he did not expect any concrete outcomes.

"The Americans, the British and the Australians are going to sit back and hear what they have to say, not tell them the way they should run their country," he said.

The talks are scheduled to start near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah later Tuesday with the main Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim opposition group, the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, boycotting it.

Prime Minister John Howard said Monday that experience in many parts of the world showed when there were strong ethnic and regional differences in a country, only a federal system of government had a chance of holding the nation together. But he stressed it was not the desire of the Australian government to impose a form of government on Iraq unacceptable to the Iraqi people.

Australia is said to seek an early switch from a US-led interimadministration to an Iraqi government. Downer said he was optimistic about a timetable set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who reportedly said he hoped elections could be held in Iraq within a year of an interim authority being established.

"I don't know whether it can be done in 12 months, but I very much hope that it could be done within 12 months," Downer said.

Australia has five staff in the so-called office of reconstruction and humanitarian affairs.

(Xinhua News Agency April 15, 2003)