WASHINGTON -- Iraqi opposition figures, once dismissed by a U.S. critic as "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London," were due to bring their case for the ouster of President Saddam Hussein to senior U.S. officials on Friday.

Their frontman is Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the umbrella Iraqi National Congress, which argues that Washington should not engineer a coup against Saddam but bring about a democratic revolution -- by force if necessary.

A decade ago, Chalabi was among critics of President George W. Bush's father for failing to promote democratic reform in Iraq after his forces stood by while Saddam crushed widespread rebellions, killing thousands of his opponents.

Now Bush junior says he is determined to bring about "regime change" in Baghdad by whatever means he deems fit and the opposition says it is unified and ready to replace Saddam.

Chalabi and representatives of five other Iraqi opposition groups based will meet Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith at the State Department Friday.

They will also "meet" Vice President Dick Cheney, currently on vacation at his home in Wyoming, by video link-up on Saturday. The session with Cheney is a measure of the importance Washington is attaching to the opposition after years of dismissing it as divided and ineffective.

Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the outspoken special envoy to the Middle East, was quoted before he left the military as saying that helping the "silk-suited" Iraqi opposition would be as much of a disaster as the CIA-backed Cuban exile invasion that Fidel Castro defeated at the Bay of Pigs.

But the United States, which is assumed by the rest of the world to be planning an attack on Baghdad but has insisted it has made no such decision, seems to have decided at least to pay lip service to respecting Iraqi opposition views.

"We want them to work together for common goals, which will benefit the people of Iraq and the region and the peace and security of the whole world," State Department Spokesman Philip Reeker told a news briefing on Wednesday.

A spokesman for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress told a news conference after arriving in Washington on Thursday that Bush had an easy task.

"It is clear that the United States, if it takes military action, can easily overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. We do not believe ... it will suffer great military difficulty," said Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a descendant of the Hashemite monarchy overthrown in 1958.

Despite Saddam's warning on Thursday that those who attacked him would be "digging their own graves," the INC spokesman said no Iraqi would fight for Saddam.

Bush should hit Saddam's power structure and cause minimal collateral damage -- if he chooses a military option -- to let Iraqis "rise up against Saddam Hussein," the spokesman said.

"The Iraqi military has been humiliated, insulted, oppressed, tortured, murdered. Their families have been abused by Saddam Hussein," he said.

"Our message will also be that the Iraqi opposition is able to fill any vacuum left after Saddam Hussein, that we do speak with one voice, that we are united, and that there is no risk of a break-up of Iraq, that there is no risk of a civil war," he told a news conference on arrival from exile in London.

The other invitees were the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Kurdish Democratic Party, the Shiite Muslim opposition and Iraqi National Accord.

The two rival Kurdish groups have administered northern Iraq since they wrested control of the Kurdish enclave from Saddam in the wake of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Commanding most of an estimated 40,000-strong anti-Saddam force between them, they come under the umbrella of the INC, as does Hakim's group.

The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq also has 3,000 fighters near Iraq's border with Iran.

Meanwhile the Canadian government said on Wednesday it would be dangerous for the United States to attack Iraq without exploring Baghdad's offer to talk about weapons inspections, but also said no U.S. strike appeared imminent.

Foreign Minister Bill Graham, sounding a more conciliatory tone than the United States or Britain, welcomed the Iraqi invitation to chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix for technical talks on arms inspections. "I regard this as positive, but I don't regard it in a naive way," Graham told reporters after a cabinet meeting. "We regard (Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein as an extremely dangerous person."

Yet precisely because of that view of Saddam, Graham said it was important to work through the United Nations at least for now lest an attack on Iraq destabilize the region.

"If we say that we're going to just attack him, clearly he's going to take defensive measures, and that could lead to a very dangerous position, which our Turkish allies and various others in the region have said," the liberal minister said.

But neither he nor Prime Minister Jean Chretien went as far as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's outspoken opposition to a strike on Iraq. Chretien said President George W. Bush had talked to him a number of times about Iraq, "and he says that if he wants to do something, he will talk to us. He has not given me any indication at this time that he is planning anything at this moment."

The prime minister said Bush knew Canada was backing him on the U.S. campaign against terrorism, with troops in Afghanistan and warships nearby.

Graham said Bush and his administration, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, had "shown a lot of restraint in these matters," and before engaging in Afghanistan had undertaken careful discussions with allies. Regarding the Iraqi situation, he said: "I would urge the Americans to encourage and make the UN system work."

But he refused to rule out joining action outside the UN umbrella should the Iraqis refuse to cooperate.

"An emergency at any one time will require an emergency response, and we can't tie our hands entirely to deal with that," he said.

After Iraq was expelled from Kuwait in 1991, the United Nations insisted on regular inspections to look for nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic weapons programs, but inspectors have been banned from Iraq since the last team left in 1998.

Graham said he worried about Saddam's track record and said Canada was united with the United States in demanding that any new inspections be thorough.