- WASHINGTON -- Days after
Washington cut funding for Ahmed Chalabi, American troops and Iraqi police
raided the home and offices of the Iraqi politician yesterday in what he
called an effort to silence his criticism of the US.
-
- More than 100 Iraqi and American personnel, believed
to include CIA officers, were said to be investigating "fraud, kidnapping
and associated matters". A spokesman for the US-led Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) said neither Mr Chalabi nor his group, the Iraqi National
Congress (INC), were the targets of the investigation. "My house was
attacked," Mr Chalabi told a news conference in Baghdad. "We
avoided by a hair's breadth a clash with my guards. I am America's best
friend in Iraq. If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack
against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and
the Iraqi people."
-
- The raid underlines the sea change in Mr Chalabi's relationship
with Washington. Little more than a year ago, the former Iraqi exile -
a Shia and backer of the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein - was touted by
some in the Bush administration as the possible future leader of an independent
but US-friendly Iraq. His group has been provided with tens of millions
of dollars.
-
- But things have changed. Mr Chalabi's intelligence reports
about Saddam's development of weapons of mass destruction have proved spurious,
as has the warm welcome he predicted US troops would receive from his fellow
Iraqis.
-
- With Washington now having decided to drop its backing
for Mr Chalabi and to distance itself from him, he is trying independently
to lever himself into a position of influence, using his position as a
member of the Iraqi Governing Council, which will be replaced on 30 June
by a new body being organised by the UN special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi.
-
- Mr Chalabi has been told he will have no position in
that body so he has been busy trying to win support from other Shia members
of the council and broaden his support among Iraq's Shia majority population.
-
- Mr Chalabi said: "I am now calling for policies
to liberate the Iraqi people, to get full sovereignty now and I am pushing
the gate in a way they don't like. I have opened up the investigation of
the oil-for-food programme which has cast doubt about the integrity of
the UN here, which they don't like."
-
- A British adviser to Mr Chalabi said the raid had the
hallmarks of Paul Bremer, head of the CPA. Claude Hankes-Drielsma said:
"The way he has been behaving [with] the governing council ... this
is very much in the style of Bremer's bully-boy tactics."
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=523352
|
