Pentagon stops payments to Iraq's Chalabi

1.00pm - By ARSHAD MOHAMMED

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has stopped funding Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile it once hoped might help lead Iraq but whose intelligence reports and motives were doubted elsewhere in Washington, US officials said on Tuesday.

The Pentagon had been giving Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress roughly US$340,000 ($577,000) a month. A US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon made its May payment to the INC, and that it was the final one.

The official said there has been no decision on whether there would be any further Pentagon relationship with Chalabi's organisation. "The nature of any future interactions with the INC is undetermined at this time," the official said.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said cutting off money to the INC "was a decision that 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. 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," Wolfowitz told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

US officials for weeks have said the US government was debating cutting off the INC, saying they had questions about the intelligence it provided as well as about whether Chalabi was motivated chiefly by a desire for power.

Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi National Council, has pressed recently for full Iraq control over the country's security forces and criticised US tactics.

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.

He has been a favourite of the Pentagon, which flew him into Iraq with a group of followers as the US-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 had many critics elsewhere in the US 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.

INC spokesman Entifadh Qanbar declined comment on the funds or on intelligence the group may have provided, saying, "I cannot talk about this confidential issue."

However, Qanbar did demand the US Central Intelligence Agency stop funding any Iraqi groups it was backing after the June 30 hand-over.

In its prewar role, Chalabi's INC directed numerous Iraqi defectors to the US government to provide intelligence that critics now say was largely spun to prod the United States into taking action against Baghdad.

Included in the questionable intelligence was information about purported biological weapons labs, the source of which was described by US officials as a fabricator promoted by Chalabi's group.

No stockpiles of banned unconventional weapons have been found in Iraq.

Another defence official said the INC "provided decent information, especially in regards to force protection issues and the whereabouts of folks (Iraqi fugitives)."

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq