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Date Posted: 07:11:08 04/08/03 Tue
Iraqi INC Stakes Claim to Role in Future Iraq
08.04.2003 [03:24]
REUTERS
The opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC), despite resistance among some in Washington, has maneuvered into a favorable position by deploying in southern Iraq to help U.S. forces deal with the local people.
The deployment of some 700 Iraqi exiles over the weekend, organized by the U.S. military, will help the INC stake a claim in negotiations on the composition of a future Iraqi government, Iraqi opposition sources said on Monday.
INC leader Ahmad Chalabi was with the self-styled Free Iraqi Forces in the southern town of Nassiriya and was already meeting local dignitaries and tribal leaders to assess the people's needs, INC leaders said.
Middle East expert Shibley Telhami said the INC deployment reflected the ascendancy in the United States of the group's allies in the Pentagon and this should ensure the opposition movement has a significant role in the next government.
"Those who support the neoconservative vision pushed by some people in the Pentagon now have the upper hand -- and the INC is part of that," said Telhami, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Chalabi's prominent role could be a blow to the Iraqi plans of the State Department and the CIA, which have argued that he has no standing inside the country after fleeing 45 years ago.
The State Department's relations with Chalabi have long been stormy. While shunning him, it sponsored Iraqi technocrats in exile whom it wanted inserted into Iraqi ministries under U.S. supervision once President Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
INC officials, angry at the rebuff, argue that the department secretly opposes a fully democratic government in Iraq because of the effect it could have on neighboring Saudi Arabia, an old U.S. ally.
They say the State Department is also wary of the Iraqi opposition's commitment to federalism, in case the Iraqi Kurds retain their autonomy and set an example for how Turkey should treat its own large Kurdish minority.
COORDINATION WITH CENTCOM
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker on Monday referred questions about the INC to U.S. Central Command, the military command which is running the U.S. and British invasion.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday the United States had not endorsed any group to form a new Iraqi government. "The Iraqi people are going to make these decisions. Clearly, the United States is not going to impose a government on Iraq," he said.
Telhami said the State Department's view of Chalabi was colored by the attitudes of neighboring Arab countries, who have never treated Chalabi as a credible leader.
A former banker, Chalabi was sentenced in Jordan to 22 years hard labor for alleged embezzlement at a bank he once owned. He left the country in 1989 before trial. Born in 1945 to a wealthy Shi'ite Muslim family, he fled Iraq in 1958 when the Hashemite monarchy was overthrown.
A senior INC official who asked not to be named said Chalabi's move to Nassiriya followed weeks of close coordination between the INC and Central Command.
"Centcom asked the INC to get involved on the ground inside the cities, especially in the last few days. so Ahmad thought it would be important to go south," he said.
LIAISON WITH U.S. COMMANDERS
The INC said on Sunday that the 700, flown in aboard U.S. transport planes, were a mixture of defectors from Saddam's government and exiled Iraqis from around the world.
Chalabi, along with the other key elements in the Iraqi opposition, had spent the previous weeks in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region outside Baghdad's control.
Intifad Qanbar, the head of the INC office in Washington, has moved to Central Command headquarters in the Gulf state of Qatar to act as liaison with U.S. commanders.
Qanbar told Reuters that the deployment had obvious benefits for law and order in parts of Iraq now under U.S. military control because the returning Iraqi exiles would in a better position to deal with the local people.
"The Iraqis who were trained in Hungary have been extremely useful. They find it much easier (than the Americans) to deal with Iraqis and this is natural. The Americans need some sort of bridge," he added.
The United States has been training hundreds of Iraqi exiles, most of them believed to be Chalabi supporters, at the Taszar military base in Hungary, mainly to act in support functions rather than as fighters.
The deployment will also have a political benefit because it could help dilute the impression that the United States and Britain are acting without any Iraqi participation, he said.
"We are committed to participate in cleaning the country of the Baathists. We haven't had an opportunity to do that before. We feel very proud to be part of the coalition," he said.
Another INC official said the decision to let Chalabi and the INC into southern Iraq was "a strategic decision by the whole of the U.S. government," despite some opposition.
Chalabi, a Shi'ite Muslim like most Iraqi southerners, might yet run into conflict with the local Shi'ite opposition, which is believed to have an extensive network in the south.
Jonathan Wright/Reuters
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