- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S.
troops and Iraqi police mounted a raid on Thursday on the headquarters
of the party led by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon
favorite who has become increasingly estranged from Washington.
-
- The soldiers raided the headquarters of the Iraqi National
Congress (INC) and a nearby house also used by Chalabi, and removed computers,
files and equipment.
-
- INC spokesman Haider Moussawi said the troops had wanted
to arrest two party members but were told by Chalabi they were not present.
Chalabi, who returned from exile after the fall of Saddam Hussein, was
not detained.
-
- "They have been putting political pressure on us
for weeks. It's part of an attempted character assassination and it's politically
motivated," he said.
-
- "When someone stands up independently and puts his
views firmly it appears the Americans don't like it."
-
- U.S. officials said on Tuesday the Pentagon had cut off
its funding of some $340,000 a month to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.
-
- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that decision
"was made in light of the process of transferring sovereignty to the
Iraqi people."
-
- "We felt it was no longer appropriate for us to
continue funding in that fashion," he told a Senate Foreign Relations
Committee hearing.
-
- "There's been some very valuable intelligence that's
been gathered through that process that's been very valuable for our forces.
But we will seek to obtain that in the future through normal intelligence
channels."
-
- CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE
-
- U.S. officials have said they had doubts about the intelligence
the INC provided and about whether Chalabi was motivated chiefly by a desire
for power. Continued ...
-
- An exile who lived abroad for more than four decades,
Chalabi was convicted in absentia of bank fraud in 1992 by a military court
in Jordan, where he had founded a bank that failed. He says the charges
were politically motivated.
-
- The Pentagon flew him into Iraq with a group of followers
as the U.S.-led invasion was winding up last year, giving him an opportunity
to establish a political base, but he has struggled to create support.
-
- Chalabi has many critics elsewhere in the U.S. government,
notably at the CIA, which suspected his group may have been penetrated
by Saddam Hussein's agents before the war and which questioned the intelligence
information it provided.
-
- The State Department also had its doubts and resented
the Pentagon's support for Chalabi. State Department officials questioned
whether he could emerge as a national leader.
-
- In its prewar role, Chalabi's INC directed Iraqi defectors
to the U.S. government to provide intelligence that critics now say was
largely spun to prod the United States into taking action against Baghdad.
-
- U.S. officials said in February that an Iraqi who had
been the source for Washington's prewar claim that Iraq had mobile biological
weapons labs had fabricated the allegation. The man had been introduced
to U.S. intelligence by Chalabi's group.
-
- No stockpiles of banned unconventional weapons have been
found in Iraq.
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- © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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