200 Iraqi delegates discuss future

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Stressing unity in a divided land, more than 200 delegates from inside and outside Iraq haggled Monday over Iraq's future, meeting in Saddam Hussein's elaborate convention hall under the protection of a ring of U.S. tanks.\nClear differences among the delegates emerged on the United States' involvement, with exiles generally seeking a diminished role for Washington.\nElsewhere, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, thanking U.S. troops for removing Saddam: "You protected our country from a gathering danger and liberated the Iraqi people."\nIn the north, Kurdish paramilitary forces in Mosul began complying with U.S. Army orders to stop armed patrols at checkpoints to relieve tensions there between Arabs and Kurds, U.S. officials said.\nThe meeting in Baghdad coincided with Saddam's 66th birthday. For years, April 28 was a national holiday filled with official celebration and enforced adulation of the authoritarian leader, who was "unanimously" endorsed by voters over the years in unopposed "elections."\nAfter an opening reading from the Quran, the 250 delegates, including a few women, were welcomed by the U.S. civil administrator for Iraq.\n"Today, on the birthday of Saddam Hussein, let us start the democratic process for the children of Iraq," retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Jay Garner told the delegates.