Proposed Iraqi PM has CIA links

[CShine]

An Iraqi neurologist who survived an assassination attempt by Saddam Hussein's agents 26 years ago will become the country's prime minister after receiving the backing of members of the interim governing council and the United Nations. The council proposed Iyad Allawi , a long-time Shiite exile with links to the CIA and MI6 who fled from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to London in the 1970s. A senior US Government official said Mr Allawi would be Iraq's prime minister in the interim government "in the next two or three days".

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He was also instrumental in organising a failed coup attempt against Saddam in 1996. Iraqi intelligence agents reputedly used a US-issued satellite telephone to call the CIA and tell them that the plotters had been rounded up.

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Mr Allawi is seen as a political heavyweight, but lacks a broad support base among Iraqis. Like Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial former banker and Shiite exile once favoured by the Americans, he is tainted in the eyes of many ordinary Iraqis by his close ties with the West.

Mr Allawi is the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, a group of former exiles that has been backed by the CIA, MI6 and Jordan. As a former Baathist in the 1960s and '70s, his nomination is designed to appeal to Sunnis, who feel disenfranchised after the fall of Saddam, and the wider group of Iraqi nationalists. Mr Allawi's nomination may reflect a political shift in Washington, which dropped Mr Chalabi after initially wanting him to lead Iraq.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/29/1085641765271.html