Post-war effort faces obstacles on leadership front

WASHINGTON–The Pentagon is planning to give a major role

in a future Iraqi government to controversial exile opposition

figure Ahmed Chalabi and members of his Iraqi National Congress,

according to Bush administration officials.

The move has sparked a new round of bitter feuding within the

U.S. government over the shape of any post-Saddam authority in

Baghdad, even as American and British troops battle in Iraq to oust

Saddam’s regime, the officials said.

The Pentagon’s No. 3 official, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas

Feith, has drafted a list of Iraqis who would hold key positions in

an interim Iraqi government, according to two U.S. officials with

long experience in Iraqi affairs.

Under the scheme, half the posts to govern Iraq’s 18 provinces

would be given to the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, a

long-feuding coalition of Iraqi exiles now operating out of

Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, said the officials, who spoke on

condition of anonymity.

Chalabi is widely given credit for keeping the cause of

overthrowing Saddam’s dictatorship alive through more than a decade

of ups and downs. He is deeply distrusted by the State Department,

CIA and the uniformed military services, who say he has little

support within Iraq and little chance of being accepted by the

country’s 25 million people.

“As best we can tell, there is nobody in the Iraqi armed forces

who knows or likes” Chalabi, said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and

White House specialist on Iraq.

Installing him in power could foment tensions with U.S. military

administrators and with the Iraqi army, which is expected to remain

a significant political power even after Saddam is gone, Pollack

said.

Chalabi, a former banker, was convicted in absentia in Jordan of

embezzlement. The CIA severed its relationship with the INC after

it was unable to account for millions of dollars in covert U.S.

aid.

Another Iraqi who may figure in U.S. post-war plans is retired

Iraqi Gen. Nizar al Khazraji, believed to be the highest ranking

military figure to defect under Saddam.

Khazraji, who had been charged in Denmark with war crimes

relating to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the

1980s, disappeared last week. Several U.S. officials said he is

believed to be in the Persian Gulf, working with U.S. forces.

Khazraji has denied the war crimes charges, and his defenders

say he played no direct role in the chemical attacks, which were

ordered by Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hassan al Majid.

The dispute over Chalabi and the INC underlines how bureaucratic

warfare over who will run Iraq, which has raged for months, has not

been settled even at this relatively late date.

How to govern Iraq after Saddam and what role to give the United

Nations are expected to dominate President Bush’s discussions with

British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David on Thursday.

Blair is pushing for a new U.N. resolution authorizing a civil

administration in Iraq, in part to bring France and Germany, which

opposed the war, into a coalition to rebuild Iraq. The United

States, however, wants to minimize the United Nations’ role.

 

 

 

Warren P. Strobel (KRT)

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