A spokesman for the supreme council, Nuri al-Safi, appeared on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera today and denounced the raids, asserting that they represented a pattern of intimidation against the political representatives of the Shiite community, which represents a majority of the population in Iraq.
One of the options under consideration, the official said, would be a peace conference that would bring Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish representatives to one table, modeled on a similar gathering Mr. Kouchner organized for Lebanese factions last month.
Negotiations to settle a standoff between occupation forces and representatives of a Shiite cleric in the southern city of Najaf have stalled, negotiators and a spokesman for the cleric said on Saturday.
Round-the-clock meetings were under way as the rumpled and tired representatives of the Shiite-majority government met at the home of President Jalal Talabani with equally exhausted-looking senior Sunni lawmakers.
In an interview, Ghazi al-Zargani, 34, the local representative of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose followers have staged uprisings against American forces, said Mr. Sadr's organization had regarded the Japanese troops in a positive light because "Japan was also occupied by the United States and suffered devastation in Hiroshima".
"We have information about the modernization of weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi regime and we have detailed information about some of the sites, as well as some of the ways in which the Iraqi regime tries to hide them," said Abdelaziz al-Hakim, a representative of a Shiite opposition group.
Saudi Arabia, for instance, was happy to help the regime in Bahrain with the violent suppression of protestors, because the Saudis regarded those protestors as representatives of Iranian-backed Shiite power.
Representatives of a rebel Shiite militia said Saturday that they expected the release of Micah Garen, a 36-year-old American journalist who was taken hostage a week ago on Friday outside a gun shop in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya.
Absent, too, were representatives from the two main Shiite political parties, who represent the country's largest single group.
