CAIRO, Egypt – Iraq’s top politicians arrive here this weekend at the invitation of the Arab League to prepare for negotiations over an Iraqi national government expected to commence in earnest next month or in January, following the country’s December 15 elections.

The meeting comes as the Arab League considers a strategy to counter a U.N. report expected to be released at the end of the month that will make further charges against Syria’s senior leadership in the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. A spokesman for the league yesterday told reporters that he hoped the issue of Iraq’s future government and the new U.N. report will not be conflated.

The meeting marks a detente between free Iraq and the host of the conference, the Arab League – an organization chided in August by Iraq’s premier for its neutrality in the war Iraqis are waging against an insurgency supported in some cases by some of the league’s member states. With Iranian influence expanding in Iraq, many Arab leaders have reassessed their neutrality and at times opposition toward the elected government in Baghdad, fearing a Shiite-dominated state in the middle of the Sunni Arab world.

The charge d’affaires of Iraq’s embassy here, Saad Ridha, said yesterday, “The Arab League is hosting us, and they are late to do this. But this is a start and this is good for us.” On August 30, Iraq’s prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said he told the league’s secretary, Amr Mussa, that Arab leaders “have no right to cast doubt on Iraq’s [political] experience … they should change their position.”

Last month, Mr. Mussa visited Baghdad for the first time, a move seen as possibly opening the door for Arab countries to establish formal embassies in Baghdad. There is some anticipation now that Jordan will also reopen its embassy in the Iraqi capital following bombings last Wednesday in three downtown hotels. According to Al Qaeda Web sites, the bombings were authorized by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s organization in Iraq.

Among those attending the conference will be a former Sunni Arab president, Ghazi al-Yawar, and the leader of the Sunni Muslim Scholars Association, Harith al-Dhari, who participated at the last-minute in negotiations to amend the constitution in Iraq that was approved in a referendum last month. At the same time, Shiite Arab Mr. al-Jaafari will attend, as will the Kurdish foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari.

The conference here comes as Iraq’s interior minister, Bayn Jabr, admitted yesterday to a secret jail in Baghdad where some insurgents had been tortured. Mr. Jabr cautioned, however, that allegations from Sunni Arabs this week, who claimed as many as 173 such insurgents, were exaggerated. Some of the victims are said to have had their skin peeled off. The FBI’s liaison office in Baghdad will assist an Iraqi investigation into the allegations, a State Department official, Gregory Sullivan said yesterday.