Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and one-time candidate of Washington's neo-conservatives as future leader of Iraq, appears set to be denied a senior role in the future government.
The man once championed by both the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney has become the focus of criticism by ordinary Iraqis, his former political allies and international officials involved in the country's reconstructiothat Chalabi is likely to be the most senior of a number of members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) who will be sidelined when a new interim government is selected to run Iraq after the transfer of sovereignty on 30 June.
According to the newspaper, Washington is also considering cutting off the US$340,000 monthly stipend to Chalabi's INC party, which has been accused of inappropriately using the money to lobby in the US.
Chalabi and the INC are also accused of being the main source of much of the -- now disproved -- intelligence, fed to the CIA and other agencies, about Saddam's WMD programs, which formed a large part of the case for invasion.
The former financier (who is still sought in Jordan for theft from his own bank) has presided over a shambolic program of de-Baathification, say insiders. In an address on Friday designed to promote national reconciliation, Iraq's American administrator, Paul Bremer, said complaints that the program was "unevenly and unjustly" administered were "legitimate" and that the program had been "poorly implemented."
At the center of those allegations are claims that Chalabi's associates had favored those who had either joined the INC or given money to it.
Although similar allegations have been leveled against other Iraqi parties and the ministries they run, Chalabi appears to have sealed his fate by infuriating Bremer and his masters in Washington by his behavior, which officials have come to regard as divisive and self-promoting.
The final straw is understood to be Chalabi's denunciation of a US decision to allow some former Baathists to return to office. He claimed it was the equivalent of allowing Nazis to return to office.
Chalabi's fall from grace has been a sharp reversal of fortune for the suave exile, who was returned to Iraq with his grandly named Iraqi Free Forces by the US days after the fall of Saddam.
An early source of tension, say officials, was the INC's rapid seizure of vast numbers of documents taken from the offices of Iraq's intelligence agencies which the INC began to exploit, handing out a CD of digests most days to the Defense Intelligence Agency packaged for its own ends.
Chalabi also quickly exerted effective control over the Ministry of Finance, to a such a degree that ministers would not make important decisions without consulting him.
The rift with Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) began, however, with Chalabi's grandstanding over one of the most shocking terrorist attacks to hit Baghdad, the bombing of the UN headquarters at the Canal Hotel, in which UN envoy Sergio de Mello died.
At the time Chalabi claimed publicly that he had had "intelligence" warning of the attack -- a claim that proved to be untrue.
Senior CPA officials were also incandescent over Chalabi's key role in the walk-out of the Shiite parties that humiliatingly delayed the signing of Iraq's interim constitution after weeks of negotiations.
But it has not only been the perception of Chalabi as a troublemaker with little public support that has weighed against him.
Increasingly, officials have also complained that his interventions on the Iraqi Governing Council have appeared to be mainly for the benefit of himself and the INC.
In one incident, during the introduction of the new Iraqi dinar, CPA sources complain bitterly that Chalabi insisted that the old currency should be incinerated -- rather than buried, as had been planned -- only for the incineration contract to go to an associate of Chalabi.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS