Thousands of people demonstrated Tuesday in this Shiite bastion against a meeting of the Iraqi opposition, stage-managed by the United States, to plot the country's future, a correspondent reported.
"Yes to freedom ... Yes to Islam ... No to America, No to Saddam," the huge crowd chanted in the centre of the southern Iraqi city.
Religious figures led the gathering, estimated by journalists to have swollen to 20,000 by mid-morning.
"We want our voice to be that of the Hawza," read one banner referring to the school of Shiite religious leaders in the neighbouring city of Najaf, a centre of Shiism, the majority sect in Iraq.
"The popular and religious forces that have organised this demonstration feel that the Hawza in Najaf is the sole representative of the Iraqi people," imam Warrad Nasrallah said.
"It's for the Hawza and not the United States or Britain, to chose the representatives of the people," he said, surrounded by young men carrying the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and shouting slogans against the Nasiriyah meeting.
One protestor said: "Our demonstration is a reply to the Nasiriyah meeting which is being staged by the United States."
"We want the American and British forces to go. They have freed us from Saddam and their job is finished," said Ihsan Mohammad, an official with the regional federation of engineers.
"If they intend to occupy us, we will oppose that. We ask them to leave us free to decide our future and not to impose people on us."
"We do not want a Shiite government because we are against sectarianism. We want real and honest representation for the Shiites," he added.
Washington has convened a meeting of Iraqi opposition groups for the first time since Saddam Hussein's fall to spell out its vision of the initial steps for Iraq's future.
But Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim opposition group has announced it would not attend while Ahmad Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress and has been tipped as a future leader, was sending a representative in his place.
The controversy comes as the United States faces mounting calls to speed up the transition process, even though it has said the war launched March 20 to topple Saddam's regime is not yet over.
The list of invitees has not been made public and the meeting was being held under extremely high security on an air base under US control near Nasiriyah.
Retired US general Jay Garner, who is expected to lead an interim administration in Iraq, was to preside over the meeting, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The Supreme Assembly of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), headquartered in neighbouring Iran - a source of tension between Tehran and Saddam's regime - said it was snubbing the meeting.
"We refuse to put ourselves under the thumb of the Americans or any other country, because that is not in the Iraqis' interests," said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the group's number two.
"We have been told that the aim of the meeting is to discuss setting up a government and not actually setting it up. What we badly need is a provisional Iraqi government."
SAIRI is the largest opposition group representing Shiite Muslims, the majority population in Iraq which was dominated in the Saddam era by the Sunni Muslim minority.
Chalabi was sending a representative even though he has headquarters little more than a stone's throw from the venue of the meeting.
Amid extensive scepticism about US plans for rebuilding the country, Chalabi - who has lived in exile most of his life - has backing from only parts of the US administration and remains an unknown quantity for most Iraqis.
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