The New York Sun February 28, 2003 INTERIM IRAQI LEADERS ARE A MIXED BAG By ADAM DAIFALLAH Staff Reporter of the Sun
WASHINGTON - An "interim leadership" of Iraqi opposition members named at a conference in northern Iraq yesterday includes at least three people with a questionable commitment to democracy. Assembled at the northern Iraqi city of Salahuddin, Iraqi dissidents chose six officials to represent them in what some say could be the nucleus of a provisional government that could seize power once Saddam Hussein is toppled. The six men include the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, and the leaders of the two parties who control Iraq's northern Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The others are Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, deputy of the Iranian-backed Islamist organization the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as SCIRI; and two leaders named in absentia, Ayad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord and former Iraqi foreign minister Adnan Pachachi. An American delegation was present at the Iraqi meeting, including President Bush's special envoy to free Iraqis, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the State Department's director of northern gulf affairs, David Pearce. The six-man leadership has some experts worried, especially given Mr. Bush's major policy address Wednesday night to the American Enterprise Institute where he said his vision for the Middle East is to use a liberated Iraq as a catalyst for further democratization in the region. The vice president of foreign and defense policy at the AEI, Danielle Pletka, told The New York Sun that Mr. Pachachi's presence in the leadership is of particular concern. She said whoever is responsible for having him elevated ought to be "totally embarrassed and ashamed." Mr. Pachachi, an 80-year-old Arab nationalist living in the United Arab Emirates, has written that he is unable to accept Israel's existence and that Iraq and Syria should unite into one giant state. Only two weeks ago, he reportedly blasted the Bush administration's foreign policy hawks as a "Zionist lobby." In 1999, Mr. Pachachi renounced a nearly 40-year-old view that Kuwait is rightfully part of Iraq. "Given the fact that this man has never done anything with the Iraqi opposition, that he wasn't present in northern Iraq, and that he has no background in fighting Saddam other than as a stooge for certain misguided Americans, I can only expect that his presence on this council is the result from pressure from outside parties," Ms. Pletka said. The interim leadership group is based on the six Iraqi opposition groups that the State Department has been working with for some time. Two of those groups, Mr. Allawi's INA and Sharif Ali Bin Al-Hussein's Constitutional Monarchy Movement, boycotted the meeting. Mr. Allawi was named to the leadership anyway, and Mr. Pachachi apparently replaced Mr. Al-Hussein. Mr. Allawi's group, comprised mainly of former Baathist associates of Saddam, has received funding from the CIA and has unsuccessfully worked with American intelligence for years to oust Saddam through coup attempts. Mr. Al-Hakim's organization, SCIRI, has reportedly dispatched 5,000 troops - the so-called Badr Brigades - into northern Iraq.The Iranian forces could play a mischievous role in a military campaign and are seen as a proxy for Tehran on Iraqi soil. Observers and Iraqi opposition members are also voicing concern about the staffing of the Defense Department's new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which is coordinating an inter-agency planning effort for the post-Saddam period. Pentagon spokesmen will only confirm that retired Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner and his deputy, Ronald Adams, are heading the office. But administration officials and Iraq watchers say that Thomas Warrick, a special advisor in the office of northern gulf affairs at the State Department, has clashed with Iraqi democrats. He has been named to a prominent post, helping with the process of slotting Iraqis into government ministries after Iraq's liberation. Mr. Warrick has quarreled with prominent members of the INC, including Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi intellectual and outspoken democrat. At the Iraqi opposition's London meeting in December, Mr. Warrick was accused of keeping INC members who are political independents from entering a meeting with Mr. Khalilzad, Mr. Bush's special envoy. "Warrick was part of the State Department team under Clinton undermining the INC and he continues to do that," said Laurie Mylroie, an Iraq expert who advised President Clinton during his 1992 presidential campaign. Sources also said two other State Department officials, Meghan O'Sullivan, an assistant to Foggy Bottom's director of policy planning, Richard Haass, and Sherri Kraham, an assistant to undersecretary of state John Bolton, would play prominent roles. Ms. O'Sullivan has been a proponent of easing U.S. sanctions against Iraq and has questioned the use of sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Libya. "Given the State Department's past history of opposing regime change in Iraq and its persistent work in dividing the Iraqi opposition, I have to confess to being surprised that the Pentagon would turn for its expertise on rebuilding Iraq to the same people who worked so hard to make sure that the Iraqi opposition would have no part in a post-Saddam Iraq," Ms. Pletka said.
