SYDNEY, Australia — It's billed as the biggest soccer event in the world — off the field. The opening Thursday of the 58th FIFA Congress held at Sydney's iconic Opera House looked the part.

While FIFA president Sepp Blatter hobnobbed with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, some of the 1,500 delegates from 208-member nations took in the view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the adjacent Opera House.

After Australian jazz trumpeter James Morrison performed along with a didgeridoo musician and Aboriginal dancers, more than 1,000 guests sat down to dinner — a selection of Australian seafood was on the menu — in a marquee in the forecourt of the Opera House.

When they go back to work — the second and last day of the 58th annual Congress ends Friday — the Congress will have one less important item to worry about.

FIFA had given the Iraqi government until midnight Thursday, Sydney local time, to reinstate its national association or Friday's Congress would have enforced a 12-month international ban, ending Iraq's chances of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.

The Iraqi national team practiced in Brisbane, Australia, on Thursday, still unsure if its qualifier against Australia on Sunday would go ahead, but FIFA received word that the association was not included in a shake-up of Iraqi sports bodies, so the ban was provisionally lifted.

"Ladies and gentleman, this has been lifted now, the suspension, and the game will now be played," Blatter told the delegates to generous applause.

The conference is also expected to ratify a united push for Blatter's "6+5" proposal, which would limit clubs to fielding a maximum of five foreign players in their starting lineups.

The proposal has met with opposition from the powerful European clubs, which regularly field teams with few homegrown players.

In 1995, the European Union's highest court decided in the landmark Bosman ruling that any foreigner limits that affected EU nationals were illegal, forcing European leagues to open up.

Top EU officials maintain the "6+5" rule would infringe EU law allowing free movement of workers between the 27 member nations, and on Wednesday instead backed UEFA's "homegrown players' rule" — which proposes a quota based of home-country development rather than nationality — in an attempt to scuttle FIFA and Blatter's plans.

Vladimir Spidla, the EU commissioner in charge of employment issues, said UEFA's rules were "proportionate and ... comply with the principle of free movement of workers."

"The Commission is giving a red card to the '6+5' rule," Spidla said. "Professional soccer players are workers, so the principle of nondiscrimination and free movement must be respected."

Blatter made a plea during his opening remarks Thursday for his plan to go ahead.

"As you can see, football is also touched by political dimension," Blatter said. "One of the big items were are going to discuss tomorrow is to protect our game, to protect our national teams, to protect the national identity of the clubs and to give motivation to young players ..."

UEFA president Michel Platini refused to be drawn on which plan he liked most, saying only that he agreed with the "objectives" of Blatter's plan.

"We accepted a resolution at the executive committee and we're OK that will be decided at the Congress tomorrow," he said. "The situation like that is not so easy. We know that quotas are forbidden in the EU, but we try to reach the objectives of the '6+5' within the limits of the law.

"It's a good resolution. It's always possible to try to ask for that. It's up to the politicians who make the laws to decide."

For Australia, the Congress was an opportunity to show it could be a good host now and in the future — 2018 to be exact — when it plans to bid for the World Cup.

"This is a chance to meet all the FIFA members in our own backyard," Football Federation Australia (FFA) chief executive Ben Buckley said earlier Thursday.

At the opening ceremony, the FIFA Order of Merit was presented to a number of soccer officials and former players, including current AC Milan captain Paolo Maldini, who is both his nation and club's most-capped player; Isaac David Sasso Sasso of Costa Rica, who served on the FIFA Executive Committee for 17 years; Zhang Jilong, vice president of the Chinese Football Association; and Mohammed Yusuf, the senior vice president of the Fiji Football Association.