The New York Sun January 27, 2003 White House Planning Stalls for Post-War Democracy in Iraq Group That Tried To Kill Chalabi Figures in Administration Planning BY ADAM DAIFALLAH
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's planning for a post-Saddam Iraq includes working with a group that has questionable democratic credentials and has tried at least once to assassinate a rival Iraqi opposition leader. As President Bush and the world await today's report on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs by United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, the Bush administration's planning for a post-Saddam Iraq appears to be proceeding at a snail's pace. A number of individuals close to the situation are concerned not only at the lack of preparation; they are worried that the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency are continuing to favor opposition forces who show no commitment to Mr. Bush's stated policy of a democratic future for Iraq. As evidence, they note that a representative of the Iraqi National Accord, Salah Al-Shaikli, was part of a meeting on Iraq's future with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on January 16. The INA, referred to in Arabic as the "Wifaq," is comprised largely of former members of Saddam's Baath party and has continually shown hostility to the Iraqi democrats. As chronicled by David Wurmser in his book "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein," in October 1995, INA operatives planted a bomb at the Iraqi National Congress' headquarters in northern Iraq, killing 29 people. One of the bomb makers announced on videotape in March 1996 that the INA's leadership had ordered him to kill the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, at the request of Saddam. The INA, which has unsuccessfully tried to foment coups against Saddam, enjoys close relations with the CIA - press reports, former and current government officials, and sources in the Iraqi opposition say the CIA has been funding the group for years. The group's leader, Ayad Allawi, has recently stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Tysons Corner, Va. - near the CIA's Langley, Va. headquarters. A retired CIA case officer who worked closely with the Iraqi opposition until in 1997, Warren Marik, said Mr. Allawi enjoys strong support in British intelligence circles but he "doesn't have the political skills for democracy." "I don't trust him. I think he's penetrated [by Saddam's agents]," Mr. Marik said. "He wants to be the top dog, but he doesn't have the political skills Chalabi has." The chairman of Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, told The New York Sun he is concerned the administration doesn't have a well-developed post-Saddam policy. If it were up to him, he said, he'd "do it differently." "The natural friend and ally is the INC and were it not for a very unhealthy antipathy toward the INC on the part of some government officials we would not be in this position. They express American policy in the region better than anyone else," Mr. Perle said. When asked why the administration works with the INA, Mr. Perle said: "I think it is an antipathy to Chalabi on the part of some small-minded people who only like working with people they can operate and control." Iraqi opposition sources told the Sun the INA has been saying that the ideas presented in a State Department report on the future of democracy in Iraq, created under the tutelage of Iraqi intellectual Kanan Makiya, were "unrealistic." That report calls for a transitional government to be created before full democratic elections in Iraq. The group is said to have a good relationship with Ben Miller, the Iraqi point man at the National Security Council who is on loan to the council from the CIA. In November 2002, the INA sent out a missive accusing Iraqi opposition leaders who were looking to broaden the size of a planned opposition conference - mainly INC sympathizers - of being in cahoots with Saddam and of trying to "sabotage" the meeting. A former Iraqi air force pilot who has worked with the INA, Mohammed Al-Ammary, fled to America in 1996 after Saddam invaded northern Iraq. He was jailed here on immigration charges, but was let go after intervention from the CIA and the INC. He asked for help from the INA - a group for which he worked in Iraq - but they refused. When he asked for a letter confirming he was not one of Saddam's agents, Mr. Allawi claimed he didn't know Mr. Al-Ammary. "When I needed help in the courts they wouldn't help me at all," Mr. Al-Ammary said. "They are not serious about being against the regime, they want to maintain the offices of Saddam's regime after Saddam's gone, they don't want the Kurds to get their federal state. The Iraqi National Accord is the same as the Baath party, just the name is different." An expert on Iraq who is publisher of the online newsletter Iraq News, Laurie Mylroie, said the INA is "totally unreliable." "They are comprised by Iraqi intelligence and in 1990-91 they promised the United States and the Saudis that they could carry out a coup. They keep saying, repeatedly, 'don't overthrow Saddam through a popular revolt, we can carry out a coup.' They always say a coup is coming," Ms. Mylroie said.
