http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAOE66OZKD.htmlRift Opens Between United States and Iraqi Leaders It Installed
By Tom Raum Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is locked in a deepening dispute with the leader of Iraq's American-installed interim government, Ahmad Chalabi, over a timetable for self rule - still another complication for U.S. efforts to rebuild the country. Administration officials thus far have rebuffed an appeal by Chalabi, the president of the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, for the United States to relinquish control to Iraqis sooner rather than later. The plan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate hearing on Wednesday, is to turn Iraq back over to its people under a seven-point plan "through a constitution and elections and then passing of sovereignty at a pace as rapidly as is reasonable."In other words, the administration doesn't intend to turn over the reins of power to an unelected council - even if it created the council
But Chalabi, a longtime ally of conservatives at the Pentagon and in Congress, and several other Iraqi leaders who also owe their posts to the United States are expected to make their case directly to Capitol Hill. The delegation of Iraqi officials attending this week's U.N. General Assembly session will head to the nation's capital next to meet with House and Senate members. Their aim: more autonomy for the council and at least partial control immediately of the finance and security ministries. They plan to argue that turning over power soon could save American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. <snip>
Chalabi and his colleagues want to hasten the day when the United States relinquishes control - but don't want to see an expanded U.N. role or additional foreign troops. Kurt Campbell, a former top Pentagon official who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the rift is the latest manifestation of an internal feud between the Pentagon and the State Department.
Powerful elements in the Pentagon would like to see Chalabi given more power and basically agree with his recent statements, while the State Department continues to favor a more deliberative process that brings in other nations, Campbell said. <snip>
The Iraqi authorities are "not legitimate because we installed them," Daalder said. "And so we now have a problem of going against the people we put in power, saying they can't be trusted."Support for Chalabi in Iraq is mixed. He has many critics opposed to anyone ruling Iraq who has spent most of his life abroad. Chalabi, 58, left Iraq as a teenager. A former banker, Chalabi founded the once-exiled Iraqi National Congress and was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 in a banking scandal and sentenced to 22 years in jail. <snip>
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