US lawmakers worry about Chalabi in new gov't

Jordan Times, Tuesday, April 27, 2004

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi on Sunday sought to defuse reports that he would be sidelined in the interim government due to take political power in Iraq from June 30, amid mounting concerns in Washington about the long-time US ally.

"We should be very careful with this man. I think he's partly the solution and a significant part of the problem. He's not trusted in Iraq, and yet he's part of the government," Representative Christopher Shays told the "Fox News Sunday" programme.

Senator Richard Lugar echoed that concern, saying in retrospect the United States probably should not have given Chalabi responsibility for dismantling the Iraqi army.

"Now, of course, we come to the point in which Ambassador Brahimi, in trying to name the people, the 29 people for the new government, is pointedly pointing toward the fact that Chalabi will not be one of them," Lugar told CNN. The top UN envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, last week laid out his proposals for a caretaker Iraqi government to be set up before June 30.

Brahimi told ABC television that not all the members of the Iraqi Governing Council should serve in the new government, and that the people in the interim government should not play a part in politics after the country's first elections.

"My personal view at this moment is that people who have political parties and are leaders of their parties should get really to win the election," Brahimi said.

The UN envoy has stressed that Iraq would have a truly representative government only after elections scheduled for next January, which he has described as the most important milestone in post-war Iraq.

Chalabi has been a key US ally in post-Saddam Iraq with longtime ties in Washington, but has recently been viewed more sceptically after claims that his Iraqi National Congress fed false information to the US government and media.

He has also been convicted in absentia by a Jordanian court of fraud and embezzling $288 million from Petra Bank into Swiss bank accounts, but he insists his conviction was part of a plot by Saddam Hussein's fallen regime.

Chalabi said Sunday that neither US nor UN officials have told him whether he will be in the new government and he dismissed Brahimi as an outsider who could not bring together Iraq's rival politicians.

"He is a controversial figure. He's not a unifying figure," Chalabi told "Fox News Sunday."

"He is supposed to be a unifying figure to choose a government that will be effective." "I hope that he will work out a way to respond to the wishes of the Iraqi people with what they think they should have and I believe that he should be more sensitive to the realities of Iraq," he said.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that the United States and Brahimi have decided to sideline most of the Iraqi politicians Washington has relied on during the last year.

Chalabi is likely to be foremost among the politicians Washington wants to sideline, the paper reported. He has increasingly alienated his former backers in the US government, prompting US officials to consider cutting off long-running financial support for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it added.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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