New York Sun Cheney Would Meet With Chalabi, Though He's Not Choosing Sides BY IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun April 4, 2005
Vice President Cheney, in a wide-ranging meeting with the editorial board of The New York Sun, extended a friendly signal to Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose relations with Washington had appeared frayed. Mr. Cheney made his comments Friday during a meeting with the editors at the Plaza Hotel. During the 45-minute session, he also expressed optimism about winning Democrats over to support the administration's plans for personal accounts as part of Social Security. The vice president was careful to say that the American government does not want to pick the leaders of Iraq, a job he said should be left to the Iraqis. But in response to a question from the Sun about whether senior American diplomats in Baghdad should meet with Mr. Chalabi as they do with other Iraqi politicians, the vice president said, "I know Mr. Chalabi myself. I've met with him. I wouldn't have any problems meeting with him today. If there's any prohibition against meeting with him, I'm unaware of it." Mr. Cheney's remarks may counter any impression in Baghdad that Mr. Chalabi is somehow persona non grata with the Bush administration. Mr. Chalabi has been accused, often anonymously and with little substantiation, of committing bank fraud in Jordan, faking pre-war intelligence, and leaking American secrets to Iran. Mr. Chalabi has filed suit in federal court in Washington against the kingdom of Jordan, accusing it of improperly acting against his Jordanian bank and of smearing his reputation with the Bush administration. He has also offered to defend himself at a congressional hearing. Mr. Cheney said, "We've also worked hard to make clear to everybody over there that we are not in the business of trying to pick winners in the elections in Iraq. ... We have been very careful not to get into the business of voicing support for any one particular individual. The Iraqis'll get it sorted out." For Mr. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, the remarks by the vice president come at an important moment. More than two months after the Iraqis voted in an election, the politicians elected to the National Assembly are still bargaining over who will emerge in top government jobs. On Thursday of last week, a commission appointed by President Bush cleared the Iraqi National Congress of any connection to a source called "curveball" who was accused of fabricating pre-war intelligence, though the commission's report did fault one other unnamed source it said was "associated with the Iraqi National Congress." On Social Security, Mr. Cheney said the president's ideas to make the retirement program more solvent may yet garner support from Democrats in Congress. "I think there's more willingness on the Democratic side to talk about this than has yet surfaced," he said. "I've talked privately with members who at this point don't want to be quoted. They're not about to step up and say anything, because the heat is on, on the other side, not to break ranks. But I think that it will be far more difficult for them to say, 'We're not going to participate in the debate, we're not willing to talk to you.'" Mr. Cheney rattled off a list of proposals for fixing Social Security. He mentioned Senator Hagel's plan, which would raise the retirement age, and Senator Lindsey Graham's plan, which would raise the ceiling on the amount of salary that is subject to payroll tax. He mentioned a plan by Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Sununu that would create private accounts averaging 6.4 percentage points of the current 12.4% payroll tax - accounts significantly larger than the 4 percentage-point maximum accounts that Mr. Bush spoke of in his State of the Union address. He also mentioned a plan put forth by a mutual fund executive, Robert Pozen, a Democrat, that would index Social Security benefits to prices instead of wages for higher-income workers. "All of these plans ultimately need to be on the table to be discussed," he said. "We have not embraced any specific one of them." The vice president said he thought the administration had been "very successful" so far in getting people to understand that Social Security has a solvency problem. But he said, "we've really just joined the debate" in terms of personal accounts as a solution. "For us to be effective, obviously, we're going to have to do battle with AARP," Mr. Cheney said. "They're out there peddling the notion that somehow what the president wants to do is quote destroy Social Security." He said that AARP's youngest members are 50, and that the Bush administration is saying that no one 55 or over would be affected by changes in Social Security. "There's a very narrow slice of AARP membership that's going to be affected by this," he said. "It's about their kids and grandkids." Asked about the prospects for the Republican Party in New York City, Mr. Cheney said that he had been pleased by the 2004 Republican National Convention that was held here. "We've had successful Republicans in New York like Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki," he said. Mr. Cheney was guarded and at times combative during the editorial board meeting, rejecting one query with "nice try," another with "I guess I didn't understand the logic of your question." Mr. Cheney has said he wants to go fly-fishing when his second term as vice president is over, rejecting the idea of running for president himself. But he smiled a broad grin at the end of the session when the vice president and managing editor of the Sun suggested that Governor Jeb Bush of Florida might make a strong vice presidential candidate in 2008, and presented Mr. Cheney with a baseball cap that read "Cheney-Bush 2008," with Bush in much smaller-sized type than Cheney. "I'm not going to wear it," the vice president vowed, then said, "I appreciate it. I might wear it into the Oval Office." URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/11578
