It is a race against the clock, Garner acknowledges, against the forces of anarchy that are sapping Iraq and the growing resentment against Americans who rid the nation of Saddam Hussein but left nothing, so far, in his place.

“If you are absent too long, while expectations are created for our government, our people and the Iraqi people, then a vacuum occurs,’’ Garner said Monday. “And if you are not there, the vacuum gets filled in ways you don’t want.’’

The retired three-star general leads a team of about 300 former military men, diplomats and functionaries from numerous government agencies who have been recruited by the Bush administration, and especially by the Pentagon, to administer postwar Iraq. They have spent the last month holed up in sun-drenched, seafront villas in Kuwait City, awaiting marching orders, but last week began fanning out across southern and northern Iraq.

The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, or ORHA, as it is known, represents a formidable nation-building program that has also been heavily criticized as American imperialism — with Garner cast as a veritable pro-consul.

Senior US officials, speaking at the headquarters of US Central Command in Qatar, described yesterday’s Iraqi opposition meeting as the first in a series of regional gatherings leading to a national meeting at which Iraqis will establish an interim authority to run the country. “We would like to set up the interim authority as soon as possible,’’ said one US official. “We’re talking about weeks, not a lot longer than that.’’

Along with Garner, White House special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker will lead the discussion.

A major Shiite opposition group boycotted the meeting, saying it did not accept “a US umbrella.’’ Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent leader of another opposition group and a Pentagon favorite to be the next president of Iraq, sent a representative. Garner downplayed the intense rivalry among the Iraqi factions and especially between those Iraqis who remained in the country during the Saddam decades and those in exile.

“I don’t think you had a love-in when they (Americans) began in Philadelphia,’’ Garner said in an extensive interview with the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. “Tension and discord, that’s the way democracy begins. It’s part of the process, and the end point is them governing themselves.

“Any time you start this type of process to lead to democratic self-government, it is fraught with dialogue, tension and coercion, and it should be. If you can’t answer the tough questions, you ought not be there.’’

The ORHA project has been criticized for its failure to get off the ground and for the fact that it is dominated by the US military, which critics contend is tone deaf to the cultural complexities of a country like Iraq, so riven by ethnic, religious and ideological differences.