WASHINGTON – Concern is mounting that a Syrian opposition conference convening here this weekend will perpetuate the exclusionary tactics of the Assad regime, as pro-Syrian democracy leaders edged out of the meeting – the first large-scale, international summit here of Syrian dissidents – also warned of participants’ alleged Baathist and Muslim Brotherhood ties.

The conference, to be held this Saturday and Sunday across the Potomac in Northern Virginia at the Crystal City Marriott, will gather about 100 activists against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad, drawing opposition leaders from America, Canada, France, Germany, and inside Syria. According to organizers, the summit – sponsored by an umbrella organization, the Syrian National Council – is meant to address, among its principal topics: cooperating with the West in order to bring about a peaceful democratic transition; highlighting and ending the human rights abuses of the Assad regime, and prompting the various parties of opposition operating in exile to “get together and get to know each other.”

Some key anti-Assad activists, however, are charging that conference participants will not “get to know” dissidents who want to see a free Syria also be a liberal and secular Syria. Among the secularists not invited to the Syrian National Council summit are one of the founders and a former speaker of the council, Mohammed Aljbaili, and the president of the Reform Party of Syria, Farid Ghadry.

In phone interviews yesterday, Messrs. Aljbaili and Ghadry expressed concern and disappointment about their non-participation and the divide in the reform movement, tracing it to their opposition to a Baathist or Islamist Syria.

“What kind of ‘united opposition’ is it if they’re excluding people?” Mr. Aljbaili, who now heads up a new reform group, Rally for Syria, said yesterday. “This will try to take away everything we’ve worked for,” he added.

Mr. Aljbaili said he was pushed out of the council after he wrote a letter to founding members in which he said the organization suffered from a “misconception of the very nature of democracy,” and urged members to deny council membership to Baathists “and to all individuals or organizations which encourage ethnic or religious segregation in the Syrian Society.” His continuing opposition to a Baathist and Islamist Syria, and Mr. Ghadry’s, he said, were the reasons for their not being invited to the conference.

As evidence, they pointed to the backgrounds and beliefs of two of the conference organizers, Housam al-Dairi and Najib Ghadbian. Mr. al-Dairi is the son of Abdul al-Dairi, a Syrian exile who was a former military official and ambassador under Saddam Hussein. The younger Mr. al-Dairi is said to have associated extensively with Baathists while living in Baghdad, including Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay. Mr. al-Dairi said yesterday that he was “never personally a Baathist,” but added: “I knew every son of a dignitary in Iraq at the time,” adding that his associations were “no secret.”

Mr. Ghadbian, a professor at the Saudi-affiliated King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas, said yesterday that he prefers for Baathists, Islamists, and the Muslim Brotherhood to be included in a post-Assad Syria. Mr. Ghadbian said that an individual he described as being “close to the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Obeida Nahas, had been invited to the conference and that he would be “happy to have him there.”

Mr. Ghadbian also said yesterday that he felt it was important for a democratic Syria to preserve its Muslim identity, adding: “You want to mention in the constitution that Syria is a Muslim country,” as is the practice in many other Middle Eastern states.

Messrs. Aljbaili and Ghadry said yesterday that their exclusion because of their differing political views on Baathism and Islamism was antithetical to the spirit of Syrian reform. Mr. Ghadry told The New York Sun that he was concerned that the silencing of different opinions at the summit was akin to the tactics employed by the Assad regime to keep dissenting voices quiet. “We don’t want to replace one dictatorship with another,” he said.

Mr. Aljbaili also expressed concern that activists who would seek to shut out some of the most active members of the Syrian opposition would have access to the Bush administration. Mr. al-Dairi, for example, met with the vice president’s daughter and a deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Elizabeth Cheney, last year.

“We made it clear to the organizers that we wanted to see this particular gathering be as inclusive as possible,” a State Department official told the Sun yesterday.

Messrs. al-Dairi and Ghadbian stressed yesterday the importance of the conference’s goals of democracy and freedom, and said that they were both strongly committed to seeing a pluralistic, liberal Syria replace the unacceptable tyranny of the Assad dictatorship. Mr. Ghadbian also said the conference would include representatives of a wide range of minority groups, and denied that the event would be influenced by radicals or members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Ghadbian said the reason for Mr. Ghadry’s not being invited was that he was perceived by dissidents who would be leaving Syria to attend the conference as too close to the Bush administration, describing Mr. Ghadry as “the Chalabi of Syria.”

Messrs. Ghadbian and al-Dairi declined to disclose the identities of the Syrian participants. The working portions of the conference, which Mr. Ghadbian said was financed entirely by Syrian National Council members, are not open to the press.