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From Friend to Foe After a startling raid in Baghdad, the U.S. launches an investigation into its former ally Ahmad Chalabi. Was he working for Iran? By ROMESH RATNESAR Ahmad chalabi likes to sleep in. he does his work at night, engaging in endless back-room meetings and talk sessions that often drag on past midnight. On most days he rises late and eats breakfast alone—but last Thursday his wake-up call came early. At 10 a.m., five armored humvees pulled up outside Chalabi's two-story house in west Baghdad. While U.S. soldiers cordoned off the street, seven Iraqi police officers broke down...

Yesterday's early-morning raid on the home and office of Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmed Chalabi in Baghdad sends "the wrong message" to America's would-be allies in the Arab world, former Pentagon official Michael Rubin tells Insight. "This is a huge blow to America's prestige. The message we've just sent is that we do not stand by our allies, that the United States can't be trusted. We've just told Arab liberals and democrats that it's just plain crazy to work with America." Rubin, who served as an aide to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, spoke with Sunni clerics, Shiite...

The short, easy and wrong solution to the problems in Iraq is to turn them all over to the United Nations and urge other countries to help. This basically is Senator John Kerry's response to any "What would you do?" questions. He and others who criticize President Bush for going to war without the UN's permission and the support of the international community offer only this egregiously useless solution. The ignorance, misconceptions and faulty judgment displayed in such thinking are appalling. To begin with, we have the support and participation in Iraq of some 30 countries. Not incidentally, the majority...

<p>WHY don't the Americans trust us? Why don't they talk to us? Even before yesterday's raid on the home of Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi Governing Council, more and more Iraqis have been asking such questions.</p> <p>"It is as if we are being scripted out of matters that concern us," says a member of the Committee for Reconstruction and Development in Baghdad. "Several European companies have been enlisted to work out urban development plans that should be decided by us."</p>

Someday we hope U.S. officials will explain to us how in scarcely a year they managed to turn one of our closest allies in ousting Saddam Hussein into an opponent of American purposes. We're referring to Ahmed Chalabi, the member of the Iraqi Governing Council whose home and office were raided by coalition forces yesterday in Baghdad. **************SNIP**************** Mr. Chalabi blamed a political vendetta inspired by U.S. regent L. Paul Bremer. And he claimed the police were hunting for records related to the U.N.'s corrupt Oil for Food Program that he's been investigating. His ties with the coalition are now...

<p>May 19, 2004 -- It looks like the investigation into the U.N. Oil for Food program — one of the biggest corruption scams in his tory — is being hindered by Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority.</p> <p>The Iraqi Governing Council appointed the international accounting firm KPMG to examine the Oil for Food program back in February specifically to investigate just what happened to the billions of dollars in Oil for Food revenues that disappeared during the last five years of Saddam's rule.</p>

<p>May 16, 2004 -- WITH just seven weeks to the scheduled transfer of power to the Iraqis, the United States seems to be preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater in exchange for a resolution from the U.N. Security Council. Convinced that the Bush administration is looking for an exit strategy with the help of the United Nations, France and Russia have already started raising the stakes on the new Iraq resolution sought by the Americans. In a series of recent statements and leaks, the two veto-holding powers have made it clear that they will not settle for anything less than a humiliating abdication by the United States of its responsibilities in Iraq.</p>

Lakhdar Brahimi is United Nations Special envoy in Iraq. He is an Arab chauvinist and anti-Semitic. He was pro-Saddam when he was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Algeria from 1991 to 1993 and Under-Secretary-General of the League of Arab States from 1984 to 1991. Not only did Brahimi endorse Saddam Hussein and remain a close ally to him, he also denied that Saddam Hussein, the glory of Arab Leader as he described him, had ever used chemical weapons. Brahimi announced on French radio that "The great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed...

In a breathless hatchet job, the left-wing Internet magazine Salon.com has joined a relentless campaign to vilify Iraqi Governing Council member Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of neocons and many members of Congress. In an article released on May 4, Salon writer John Dizard alleges that Chalabi made false promises to his U.S. supporters, delivered fake intelligence, and more recently worked behind the back of U.S. intelligence in Iraq to allow agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran to organize Iraqi Shiites against the U.S. occupation. The allegations would be devastating if they were true. But a key source Dizard...

<p>BAGHDAD -- Would-be leaders of a democratic Iraq are turning up the heat on United Nations' envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, leveling furious criticism as the Algerian diplomat nears a decision on who should lead an interim government until elections in January.</p>

BAGHDAD: UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, charged with helping form an interim Iraqi government, rejected on Saturday the criticism from members of the US-appointed Governing Council, who accused him of not consulting them on his plans. Brahimi told them the ideas he had submitted to the UN Security Council on the creation of the new transitional body were not drawn up by him or the United Nations. "What we have done is explain the ideas that we have submitted to the Security Council, underlining the fact that these were not a plan from the United Nations or me personally but our...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - An expanded Governing Council should appoint and oversee the work of a caretaker government due to take over from the U.S.-led occupation June 30, the U.S.-picked body said Saturday. The statement by the council was the clearest sign yet of significant differences between the Iraqi administration and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi over the best way to establish a transitional government to take power June 30 until elections the following January. Brahimi, who arrived Thursday to help set up the new government, had proposed an administration with limited powers and made up of Iraqis without ties to...

BAGHDAD: UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said he wanted the government scheduled to take over from the US-led occupation June 30 to have only limited powers - a goal he said many Iraqis including some of his detractors share. Brahimi, who arrived in Iraq on Friday, also stressed that his proposals were only "ideas in principle" which he developed after consultations with Iraqis during his visits to Iraq in February and April. The proposed government, he said, should be selected before June 1 to allow it to take part in consultations over a proposed UN Security Council resolution expected to...

United Nations, 7 May 2004 (RFE/RL) -- As UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi begins final negotiations on an interim Iraqi government, he's facing renewed opposition from Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi. Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, told journalists that neither Brahimi nor the UN have the credibility to lead the transition. He also said Brahimi, a Sunni Muslim Algerian, was too close to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein. "To have somebody from outside the country who is an Arab nationalist who had some great support to Saddam in the past, to come and rule the political process in...

<p>May 6, 2004 -- WITHIN the next week or so, the United Nations' special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, is expected to unveil his plan for handling the transition in Baghdad. How America and its Coalition allies react to that plan could determine not only the future of democracy in Iraq but also the fate of President Bush's strategy for a new Middle East.</p>

Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis in on the action — right from the beginning. The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. Second, although it's painfully obvious that much is wrong with this occupation, it's simple-minded to assume that more troops will fix it. More troops may be needed now, but more of the same will not do the job. Something different is needed —...

Why the Kurds have reason to be wary of Lakhdar Brahimi 02 May 2004 KurdishMedia.com - By Dr Sabah A. Salih A critic of Arab patriotic bluster he is not. A man without ideological blinkers he is not. A universalist questioning racial privilege and the limits of nationalism he is not. On the contrary, Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi is a voice of Arab particularity. It is a voice that sees the Arab nation as a perennial victim of western imperialism and Zionism, a voice that vehemently opposed the American intervention in Iraq, a voice that, rather speaking out against Saddam’s authoritarian...

In Defense of Dr. Chalabi – Who Is Lakhdar Brahimi? 23 April 2004 KurdishMedia.com - By Agit Can The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States marked a bloody beginning to a new era in international relations. Large-scale international terrorism was no longer a distant threat confined to the Middle East – it had now hit two major American cities and taken the lives of thousands of innocent Americans. US President George W. Bush declared a war on terror, aimed at weakening and eliminating terrorist threats to the US and the civilized world. Weeks after the largest terrorist...

Calls for the United Nations to be given a substantial role in Iraq are mounting. With the planned withdrawal of Spanish troops and the ongoing violence in parts of the country, President Bush is under increasing pressure to involve the U.N. Bowing to such pressure, however, will undoubtedly have far-reaching consequences for Iraq's democratization. At the end of World War I, the British established Iraq as a country ruled by Sunni Arabs; this minority dominated both the military and the government. Thus were set the foundations for Saddam Hussein's rise to power and decades of Iraqi suffering. So when Ambassador...

WASHINGTON U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the Bush administration's great Arab hope to appoint a transition government that would bring democracy to Iraq, is off to a troubling start. His first mistake was to announce on French radio that "the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians," as well as the "equally unjust support of the United States for this policy." That freelance condemnation was too much for even Kofi Annan, who sent out his official spokesman to explain that Brahimi was "a former foreign minister of Algeria" who...