Chalabi's road to the Prime Ministership in June?

[Michael Pollak <mpollak@xxxxxxxxx>]

  [So even Arnaud de Borchgrave knows the cold war is over?]

   URL: http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20040329-094918-2616r

   Commentary: Chalabi's road to victory

   By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
   UPI Editor at Large
   Published 3/29/2004 12:24 PM

   WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- With only three months to go before L.
   Paul Bremer trades in his Iraqi pro-consul baton for beachwear and a
   hard-earned vacation, the country's most controversial politician is
   already well positioned to become prime minister.

   Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's heartthrob and the State Department's
   and CIA's heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political
   marathon. Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give
   the future prime minister more power than the president. The role of
   the president will be limited because his decisions will have to be
   ratified by two deputy presidents, or vice presidents. Key ministries,
   such as Defense and Interior, will be taking orders from the prime
   minister.

   Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons -- several dozen tons of documents
   and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress from Saddam
   Hussein's secret security apparatus. Coupled with his position as head
   of the de-Baathification commission, Chalabi, barely a year since he
   returned to his homeland after 45 years of exile, has emerged as the
   power behind a vacant throne. He also appears to have impressive
   amounts of cash at his disposal and a say in which companies get the
   nod for some of the $18.4 billion earmarked for reconstruction. One
   company executive who asked that both his and the company's name be
   withheld said, "The commission was steep even by Middle Eastern
   standards."

   Chalabi is still on the Defense Intelligence Agency's budget for a
   secret stipend of $340,000 a month. The $40 million the INC has
   received since 1994 from the U.S. government also covered the expenses
   of Iraqi military defectors' stories about weapons of mass destruction
   and the Iraqi regime's links with al-Qaida, which provided President
   Bush with a casus belli for the war on Iraq.

   When Chalabi established the Petra Bank in Amman, Jordan, in the
   1980s, he favored small loans to military officers, non-commissioned
   officers, royal guards and intelligence officers. He developed a close
   rapport with then Crown Price Hassan who borrowed a total of $20
   million. After Petra went belly up with a loss of $300 million at the
   end of the decade, Chalabi escaped to Syria in a car supplied by
   Hassan -- minutes ahead of the officers who had come to arrest him for
   embezzling his own bank. The Petra fiasco debacle left him sufficient
   funds to launch INC a few days later.

   Today, the MIT-trained mathematician says he has the documents that
   will prove he was framed by two Husseins -- Saddam and the late king
   of Jordan -- who wanted to put an end to his anti-Iraqi activities.
   Jordan used to get most of its oil needs from Iraq free or heavily
   discounted, which explains why King Hussein declined to join the
   anti-Iraq coalition in the first Gulf War.

   Sentenced in Jordan, in absentia, to 22 years hard labor for massive
   bank fraud, Chalabi hints he also has incriminating evidence of a
   close "subsidiary" relationship between Jordan's King Abdullah and
   Saddam's depraved, sadistic elder son, Uday, killed last year in a
   shootout with U.S. troops.

   Potentially embarrassing for prominent U.S. citizens, Chalabi's aides
   hint his treasure trove of Mukhabarat documents includes names of
   American "agents of influence" on Saddam's payroll, as well as a
   number of Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV news reporters who were working
   for Iraqi intelligence.

   The final selection for prime minister will need the assent of the
   president and his two deputies -- representing the country's three
   principal ethnic and religious groupings. Standard-bearer for Iraq's
   60 percent Shiite majority and free Iraq's first president will be
   Abdulaziz Hakim. He is the brother of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir
   al-Hakim, killed last year with 90 worshippers when a car bomb rocked
   the country's holiest Shiite shrine in Najaf. With an Islamic green
   light from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Hakim will almost certainly
   opt for fellow Shiite Chalabi as prime minister.

   Slated for one of the two vice presidential slots is Adnan Pachachi, a
   Sunni octogenarian with a secular liberal outlook. He served as
   foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations before the
   Baathists seized power in a military coup in 1968. Pachachi's nod may
   also go to Chalabi.

   For the third leg of the troika, rival Kurdish parties have agreed to
   unite behind Jalal Talabani, chief of the Patriotic Union of
   Kurdistan. His vote, now believed to be favorable, would make it three
   out of three for Chalabi.

   Referring to Chalabi, a former U.S. ambassador recently back from an
   extended trip to Iraq, said, "Anyone who can get the U.S. to invade
   Iraq must be a very clever politician. As for the people his INC
   coached in London to disinform the U.S. intelligence community about
   Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, you've got to hand
   it to the guy. Don't blame him. Blame the Pentagon for not seeing
   through him."

   If Chalabi's fast track to power is not derailed and he becomes prime
   minister in July, the president won't be able to fire him unless his
   two deputies agree. The provisional constitution seems tailor-made for
   Chalabi to call the shots into 2005. As head of the Governing
   Council's economic and finance committee, Chalabi has already
   maneuvered loyalists into key Cabinet positions in the provisional
   authority -- finance, oil, and trade. The Central Bank Governor, the
   head of the trade bank and the managing director of the largest
   commercial bank also owe their positions to Chalabi's influence.

   While in exile in London, he cultivated close contacts with Israeli
   officials. He has also visited Iran a number of times to confer with
   leading Ayatollahs in a bid for their support. He was given permission
   to open an INC office in Tehran. His strongest backers in the U.S. are
   Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
   and neo-con theoretician ("An End to Evil") Richard Perle.

   All the bases are loaded for a home run by MVP Chalabi. If successful,
   it will be an additional campaign issue president Bush could have done
   without. Saddam was good riddance. But was Chalabi a worthy democratic
   trade?

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