Chalabi expected to meet US officials in Washington
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader
accused of giving the Bush administration flawed information
about Saddam Hussein’s weapons program, will visit Washington
in November amid speculation that U.S. officials view him as an
acceptable candidate for Iraqi prime minister.
Chalabi, who is now Iraq’s deputy prime minister, is
expected to meet with Treasury Secretary John Snow next month
to discuss the progress of economic reconstruction, a Treasury
spokesman said on Sunday.
A date for the meeting has not yet been announced.
A State Department spokesman said Chalabi could also meet
with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. No meeting has been
announced.
The November visit was first reported by Time magazine,
which said in its October 31 edition that Chalabi is due to
meet with national security adviser Stephen Hadley.
Time quoted unnamed administration officials as saying Rice
and Hadley both view Chalabi as “a plausible and acceptable”
candidate for prime minister in the next round of Iraqi
elections due December 15.
The longtime Iraqi exile began attracting U.S. attention as
a potential prime minister after Washington decided Iraq’s
current premier, Ibrahim Jaafari, had discredited himself by
seeking overly friendly relations with Iran, Time said, quoting
unnamed administration officials.
State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez denied the United
States has any preferences. “What we’ve been saying all along
is that this is an Iraqi process. The Iraqi people will
determine who their representatives are,” he said.
U.S. officials saw Chalabi as a possible postwar leader of
Iraq before the 2003 invasion, when Chalabi was the
best-connected Iraqi politician in Washington.
His Iraqi National Congress directed defectors to the U.S.
government with intelligence on Iraq’s weapons program that
critics now say was largely crafted to prod the United States
into taking action against Saddam.
The Pentagon, one of Chalabi’s main prewar supporters, paid
the INC $340,000 a month for intelligence on Iraq.
Chalabi had a falling out with his U.S. backers after no
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
U.S. troops raided his home in early 2004.
But a presidential commission in March quoted the CIA as
saying the Chalabi group had little influence on assertions
that President George W. Bush used to justify the invasion.
A U.S.-educated mathematician and businessman, Chalabi was
also a source on prewar Iraq for New York Times reporter Judith
Miller, who is now at the center of an investigation into the
leaking of a CIA operative’s identity.