IRAQ NEWS, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2003
I. PACHACHI SLAMS "HAWKS," AFP, FEB 14
II. US COURTS PACHACHI, NYT, FEB 11
III. KUBBA OPPOSED IRAQ LIBERATION ACT, NY SUN, DEC 23
It is very hard to understand what the US is doing in regards to planning
for a post-war Iraq.
AFP reported yesterday that Adnan Pachachi--whom the White House enovy to
the Iraqi opposition, Zalmay Khalilzad, travelled to the United Arab
Emirates to meet earlier this week--"blasted as a 'Zioinst lobby' the hawks
in the administration."
Indeed, the NY Sun, Feb 12 (previously distributed), detailed Pachachi's
views: an old-style Arab nationalist, essentially hostile to the US and its
allies. The NYT, Feb 11, noted Pachachi's public declaration in 1961 that
Kuwait was part of Iraq and had no right to exist independently, a position
he held in 1991 and did not change until 1999, 38 years later.
Among those who praised Pachachi to the NYT was Laith Kubba, who called
Pachachi "a voice of authority and wisdom." Kubba is another State Dep't
favorite, as the NY Sun, Dec 23, explained.
And who is Kubba? Once a member of the al-Dawa party, he opposed the
1998 Iraq Liberation Act. Why should the US promote such individuals?
Moreover, Kubba is, somewhat surprisingly, a grants officer at the
National Endowment for Democracy. Some Iraqis have asked "Iraq News"
whether there isn't some conflict between being a US official, responsible
for distributing money to Iraqis, and, at the same time, seeking to be a
figure within Iraqi opposition politics, which includes standing for
election before a group of people, some number of whom may well hope that
you'll okay their grant proposal?
I. PACHACHI SLAMS "HAWKS"
Iraqi exile Pachachi ready to serve post-Saddam Iraq
February 14, 2003
Agence France-Presse
ABU DHABI, Feb 14 (AFP) - Iraqi exile Adnan Pachachi said Friday he was
ready to serve Iraq in the "difficult" transitional period the country might
go through should the regime of Saddam Hussein be
toppled.
Pachachi, 80, told AFP he held talks in the United Arab Emirates, where he
has lived for 30 years, on Tuesday with Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington's
"special envoy and ambassador-at-large for free Iraqis."
While denying having received a specific "American offer," Pachachi pleaded
that the United Nations mandate a "civilian Iraqi leadership to manage Iraq
during the transitional period."
"After or before the US offensive" in Iraq, the UN Security Council should
adopt a new resolution "giving the UN secretary-general the ability to name
a representative in Iraq to cooperate with the
civilian Iraqi administration."
Pachachi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the UN and foreign minister, blasted
as a "Zionist lobby" the hawks in the administration of US President George
W.Bush.
"This lobby is opposed to me playing any role (in Iraq), through the
instigation of Ahmad Chalabi," who heads the Iraqi National Congress (INC)
umbrella opposition group, Pachachi said.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Pachachi, who has Emirati
nationality, is being considered by Washington to play a major role in
post-Saddam Iraq.
However, he is hindered by his 1961 statement that neighbouring Kuwait is a
province of Iraq, a statement he only retracted in 1999.
The octogenarian added that recognition of Israel was dependent on a
"peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, accepted by the
Palestinians."
II. US COURTS PACHACHI, NYT
February 11, 2003
THE OPPOSITION
Envoy's Effort to Recruit Iraqi Exile for Possible Future Government Sparks
Protests
By JUDITH MILLER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 - President Bush's special envoy to the Iraqi opposition
is quietly trying to recruit a former senior Iraqi official to help provide
a transition to democracy in the event that Saddam Hussein is ousted,
administration officials said today.
But the effort by Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House envoy, to woo Adnan
Pachachi, an octogenarian exile who once served as a foreign minister and
ambassador to the United Nations for Iraq, has sparked opposition within the
administration and among other Iraqi exiles.
Mr. Pachachi declared publicly in 1961 that Kuwait was part of Iraq and had
no right to exist independently, a statement he renounced in 1999.
Laith Kubba, another exile and a researcher at the Washington-based National
Endowment for Democracy, defended Mr. Pachachi, calling him a "voice of
authority and wisdom" and saying that "he must be allowed to play a role."
Mr. Khalilzad recently traveled to the United Arab Emirates to recruit Mr.
Pachachi. But officials said that several Pentagon officials and Iraq
experts had warned Mr. Khalilzad that the effort at this late stage would
backfire politically and could alienate Kuwait, an essential base of
operations in any gulf war.
"The outreach to Mr. Pachachi, a once ardent Arab nationalist and Sunni
Muslim, the minority branch of Islam in Iraq, suggests that the United
States is mainly interested in perpetuating the status quo in a post-Saddam
Iraq, and not in promoting democracy," an administration official said.
Danielle Pletka, a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, a
Washington-based research center, called the effort "very disappointing."
"Pachachi was the first person that the administration tried to cultivate as
an alternative to Ahmad Chalabi and to other Iraqi exiles who have been
working for over a decade to oust Saddam," she said. Mr. Chalabi is the
secular, Shiite leader of the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition
umbrella group that the administration officially supports.
Officials said Mr. Khalilzad was scheduled to meet Mr. Pachachi on Tuesday.
Mr. Khalilzad's office said he could not be reached because he was
traveling, and he did not respond to questions e-mailed to him about the
diplomatic flap.
Several officials said that at the Pentagon in particular, objections had
been raised to the recruitment of Mr. Pachachi in meetings with Mr.
Khalilzad and with State Department officials. The State Department and the
Central Intelligence Agency are known to have strong reservations about Mr.
Chalabi's leadership of the Iraqi National Congress. They complain that he
has little support inside Iraq and doubt that he is a commanding enough
figure to lead a transition to democracy.
Both the State Department and the C.I.A. have sought to broaden the Iraqi
opposition, apparently in the hope of finding someone who could serve the
role that President Hamid Karzai has played in Afghanistan. Mr. Khalilzad
has worked to include what some officials denigrate as "Sunni establishment"
figures in a consultative council that Mr. Khalilzad is trying to create.
Ms. Pletka, other Iraq experts and several Administration officials said
recruiting Mr. Pachachi also raised questions about whether plans for a
post-Hussein leadership were falling behind plans for a war.
Francis Brooke, the Iraqi National Congress's longstanding Washington
adviser, said that the I.N.C. was still barred from spending American money
to foment opposition to the Hussein government inside Iraq, and that a
shortage of funds had forced the umbrella group to shut down its radio and
television stations in northern Iraq. Mr. Brooke said his group had received
no money for such activities since July.
"The lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq shows confusion that is very
troubling," he said. "And in some minds it calls into question the U.S.
commitment to a united, democratic opposition."
Mr. Chalabi is in northern Iraq, meeting with Kurdish leaders and other
opposition figures and trying to organize a meeting of dissidents there. The
meeting, which has repeatedly been postponed, is now scheduled for Saturday,
though some dissidents said it could be deferred again.
Meanwhile, Mr. Khalilzad has been trying to organize yet another meeting of
exiles in London this week, leading some Iraqi dissidents to question
whether the administration is trying to prevent the I.N.C. from gathering
because it fears that Mr. Chalabi and the Kurdish leaders might try to form
a government-in-exile at their meeting.
The Bush administration has decided against promoting the formation of such
a government in exile, a decision that some Iraq experts have praised.
"Washington can't anoint a group of exiles and tell the Iraqi people: here
they are, meet your new leaders, and have Iraqis find people they don't know
and don't like," said Ken Pollack, a former White House Middle East expert
in the Clinton administration. "That would make us look like a colonial
power."
But Mr. Chalabi and Kurdish leaders have repeatedly said they did not want
to form a government in exile. They have said they would rather establish a
coordinating committee that would work with other exiles and Iraqis, once
they were liberated, to build a democratic government in Baghdad.
III. KUBBA OPPOSED IRAQ LIBERATION ACT
The New York Sun
December 23, 2002
Support for True Democracy in Iraq
By ADAM DAIFALLAH
As free Iraqis from around the globe convened for their opposition
conference in a London hotel where they had gathered to discuss their
country's future, one could feel the sense of seriousness in the air: This
was for real.
As America and her allies moved closer to military intervention to remove
Saddam Hussein from power, Iraqi dissidents knew that this meeting may have
been their last chance to show the world that they could accomplish
something constructive.
Their movement had been plagued by internal disagreement, so much so that
they were unable agree on the number of participants to their opposition
conference until just hours before the meeting started.
But they finally did come to an agreement. More than 300 Iraqis attended. It
was supposed to last three days; it ended up lasting five. And when it was
all over, they had something concrete to show - a political statement
outlining their basic political objectives for a post-Saddam Iraq.
Sure, the meeting was fractious. Some of the Shiite groups walked out on the
final day. The conference endorsed Islam as the official state religion of a
future Iraq - a decision that upset the Assyrians, a minority within Iraq,
who attended the conference. The underlying divisions between various
factions are as deep as ever. But the mere fact that Iraqis were able to
convene for such a meeting and practice democracy is in itself an
accomplishment, and shows that when given the ability to do so, they can put
the democratic process to work.
But the question left unresolved at the meeting is leadership. Who will lead
a future Iraq?
The conference's participants say the people of Iraq. But the decision of
who might lead until elections might be left to a 75-member coordinating
committee that was established, consisting of various opposition figures
from all political stripes.
That committee is set to meet in mid-January at the northern Kurdish city of
Erbil, where it is expected that a three-person "Sovereign Council" will be
formed to lead Iraq through the volatile period following Saddam's ouster.
President Bush has made it clear where he stands on the future of Iraq's
government. The president's special envoy and ambassador at large for free
Iraqis, Zalmay Khalilzad, said a post-Saddam Iraq will be free from tyranny
and that "its people will unite to build a democratic future."
"No Saddamism without Saddam, no dictatorship," he unequivocally stated to
free Iraqis at their conference.
The problem is that not all branches of the Bush administration appear to be
reading from the same book.
Delegates at the conference from the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella
organization of opposition groups, said State Department officials were
involved in blocking them from attending a meeting Mr. Khalilzad held with
independent delegates. The INC is not a political party, and Mr. Khalilzad
requested that they be allowed in. But they were not.
Observers say that State is still trying to undermine Ahmad Chalabi, the
leading figure of the INC. Mr. Chalabi, an unapologetically pro-Western
democrat, was clearly the star at the London conference. He is what the
French call a rassembleur; he is able to bring disparate groups together.
Delegates from various factions said Mr. Chalabi was instrumental in keeping
various camps united at the conference.
Mr. Chalabi has cultivated an impressive crop of friends in Washington, and
observers say he would be an impressive leader of a liberated Iraq. But he
also has enemies, namely several powerful players at the Central
Intelligence Agency and the State Department.
State's deeply entrenched and careerist bureaucrats cannot control Mr.
Chalabi, so they dislike him. The CIA has had knives out for him ever since
they ignored his warnings that a coup plot against Saddam in 1996 had been
compromised, which it had been.
Officials at Foggy Bottom have long been cultivating alternatives to Mr.
Chalabi. Lately, they are said to be promoting Laith Kubba, an Iraqi
intellectual who was formerly a member of the radical Al-Dawa party. Mr.
Kubba openly opposed the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act and has in the past
criticized American policy toward Iraq. In an embarrassment for Mr. Kubba's
boosters, he was not selected to sit on the coordinating committee.
Meanwhile, the CIA funds the Iraqi National Accord, a group led by one of
Saddam's former top lieutenants who is steeped in the discredited Baathist
ideology, Ayad Allawi.
Iraq is easily the most ethnically diverse country in the Middle East.
Should Saddam be deposed, Iraq has the opportunity to become the lynchpin of
a democratic movement that could sweep through the Middle East and change
the geopolitical landscape in a way unseen since the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
As Mr. Bush's official representative to the Iraqi opposition meeting last
week, Mr. Khalilzad made America's position unambiguous: support for true
democracy in Iraq - not a kindler, gentler dictator.
If Mr. Bush wants that position to become reality, he'll have to instruct
the rest of the executive branch not to undermine it.
