- WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration
has signalled an end to its relationship with Ahmad Chalabi, the leader
of the Iraqi National Congress and the Pentagon's former favourite for
leadership of the country.
-
- After months of feuding within President George W Bush's
administration over Mr Chalabi's role, the Pentagon is stopping monthly
payments of $335,000 (£200,000) to the INC for intelligence-gathering
in Iraq.
-
- The decision was taken a week ago at a meeting of Mr
Bush's senior officials, including the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
and the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and reflects a renunciation of
Mr Chalabi, a source close to the administration said.
-
- The monthly payments, which began in summer 2002 as part
of a programme run by the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence
arm, are to end on June 30, when the coalition will hand over sovereignty.
-
- Backed by powerful sponsors in the Pentagon and Vice-President
Dick Cheney's office, Mr Chalabi, a former exile, played a major role in
urging the administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
-
- His prominence was always opposed by the State Department
and the CIA, which had grown to mistrust him after years of contacts. During
the past year, his stock has fallen, even among former supporters in the
Pentagon.
-
- His appearance at the United Nations last September when
he criticised the coalition's performance in Iraq infuriated Mr Bush, who
sets much store by loyalty.
-
- He has also become a whipping boy for critics of the
administration amid growing evidence that much of the faulty intelligence
about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programmes came from his network
of exiles and defectors.
-
- Reports that the erroneous information about mobile biological
weapons laboratories, a key part of America's case for war, came from a
brother of one of Mr Chalabi's aides, nicknamed "Curveball",
worsened the irritation in Washington. Mr Chalabi has angrily denied any
knowledge of "Curveball".
-
- More recently, with the administration increasingly desperate
to finesse Iraq's transition and dependent on the UN, it has seen Mr Chalabi
as part of the problem rather than the solution.
-
- His supporters, who include prominent neo-conservatives,
regard him as a victim of internal warfare between the Pentagon and State
Department, where the mood is now more chipper because of the Pentagon's
difficulties.
-
- They defend his intelligence operation, and say it is
ironic that Washington is sidelining a westernised liberal while doing
deals with former Ba'athists and Iranian-backed groups.
-
- "Much of the information he collected was to roll
up the insurgency and Ba'athist cells. It caught people red-handed,"
said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser who is now at a conservative
think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute.
-
- "By telegraphing that he is not the favourite son
of America, the administration will bolster him, showing he is his own
man."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/19/wirq19.xml
&sSheet=/news/2004/05/19/ixnewstop.html
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