Free Iraqis last night drew up a 13-point plan to rebuild their country from the rubble of war and decades of totalitarian rule.

The first tentative steps towards replacing the tyranny of Saddam Hussein with democracy were taken at a meeting in a desert tent at Ur, in the shadow of the birthplace of Abraham.

Some Iraqi exiles wept with joy as they arrived for the US-sponsored meeting, which was intended to bring together Kurds, Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, exiles and those who had resisted Saddam from inside Iraq.

But some groups opposed the US plans to install retired General Jay Garner as an interim leader and refused to attend the meeting.

Hundreds of people took to the streets of nearby Nasiriyah to demonstrate against the process.

The largest Iraqi Shi'ite group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, boycotted the meeting and said it was refusing to recognise any temporary US-led administration.

Abdul Aziz Hakim, one of the group's leaders, said: "Iraq needs an Iraqi interim government.

"Anything other than this tramples the rights of the Iraqi people and will be a return to the era of colonisation."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in Qatar on a whistlestop tour of the Middle East, said open opposition to the meeting was a sign that "politics has broken out" in Iraq after decades of dictatorship.

"It's a start. I'm glad that there is vocal opposition, that this Shia group can express their opinion," he said.

"Under Saddam if they had they would have ended up in the torture chambers of Basra or dead."

The 13-point statement they drew up set out the road to a democratically-elected federal government.

It included a resolution that Saddam's Ba'ath Party must be "dissolved and its effects on society eliminated", but did not decide the issue of separating church and state.

Delegates agreed to meet again in ten days time at a venue to be decided.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said he wanted the United Nations to have a key role in post-war Iraq.

It should be involved in humanitarian relief and political and economic rebuilding, he said.

Meanwhile, across towns and cities in Iraq, reports of looting and sporadic firefights continued to dwindle.

US attentions were turning to finding biological and chemical weapons and 600 soldiers were taken off regular duties to scour Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

It was also focusing on Syria, which it accuses of having chemical weapons and harbouring Saddam's henchmen.

But Mr Straw refused to back the US description of Syria as a "rogue state".